To sleep alongside my father—
what was I then, but those bones,
tied taut in the bag—
when he told me to unstring
my beads, they all fell to the boards.
Having been born as parts
entrusted to sockets,
which then wander from the joint—
they grow, with palmfuls of hair,
the scalp that smells, child’s body,
clutch-to-me, mass of lolling dross.
-2004
