JUDE MARR

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Photo by S W

Evidence of Survival

troglodyte smudges, red as rusted
blood, my palm can’t fit: letter-scars, scratched
on bombed cathedral glass: photographs
abandoned with a bitter kiss: object
histories of loss—

numbers etched in lovers’
flesh, indelicate—

aftertaste of salt, blue-staining famished
lips: dripping fingers wrapped around a shattered
wrist: bright blooms bursting
from bleached body’s ribs—what
fresh hell is this—

roll it back—

ghost ads spackle city walls made weak
by bartered fear: mortar crumbles, canonizing
time’s disjoint: another summer’s
here: I see a ragged dandelion clock
become trace flight.

Relics

I found a scarred box of hair in your closet: a box, not heartwood, filled
with cut kiss-curls: and I knew, without history’s mirror, that the hair
belonged to me—

once upon a time, you stole my hair

you also took photographs: my image is your calendar: visible, naked: as
I arrived, and as I will leave: speechless, shorn, unframed—

once upon a time, you nailed me there

when you pulled my hair into braids, when you twisted torn roots
around your finger, my umbilical shriveled again—

once upon a time, we were a pair

splinters from the old ash tree at your window lodge in my skin as I
climb—

once upon a time, I was afraid
but only once upon a time—

I am no baby: I chop through hanging rags in your closet to rescue my
fine, faded hair: old cloth, old wood, unaltered DNA—

your genes are not my altered ego

later, alone in your cell-like room, you will chop off another faded day.