Piecemeal
So many of my friends even my family
want labels. Want each part of me divided
parsed into neatly organised boxes
drawers shelves folders trashcans
My hands should go into that grey box
marked in black letters worker
My ears should go into a piano bench
tagged with a sticky note where everything is music
My feet quiescent in an old shoebox
that bears the sticker runner. So many miles.
Nearby a roll of foamcore holds a collage
ravens and foxes and nautilus shells. Yūgen
haunter of woods who has no words for green love.
Into this basket woven by Rwandan women
I squish my ovaries identified as breeder
not to be confused with mother, safely stored
between the foxed pages of a thesaurus.
On an adjacent shelf, beside a scarlet chop,
my tattered heart nestles in a bird nest
barely large enough to hold its unnamed pieces.
Its wings are splinted now.
An arm is wrapped in a threadbare infant quilt
a cracked knee beneath a bronze tray
inside a lacquered box a teacup stained
with tea leaves that knew the future once.
Somewhere among these scraps & shards
a compass might point north, and pieces
heed a lodestone’s call. But perhaps words
are not music, and pieces never make a whole.
But possibly… music is the skeleton of language
and song lives within each name. I sing myself,
gestalt of broken pottery, torn pages, lost ribbon.
I sing myself.
I never thought of myself in this way – and now, through your poet’s eyes, I will. This is a luminously beautiful piece of writing – I will come back to read these lines again and again. Thank you.
Thank you!
I love the imagery. Well done!
Truly fabulous. So glad to find you again (we exchanged comments last year). This is such a creative and original – and utterly unique, given how many truly you-specific details are woven in. Generally I like to repeat a couple of lines that really stood out to me. In this case I might simply be repeating the entire thing … Thank you so much.
I really love this.
Great imagery
Wow. There is power in the way you put your thoughts into words.
Wow! How to take a line and make it your own! I love this piece – so many lines that surprise or twist with meaning – giving us new sight! From: ‘My feet quiescent in an old shoebox that bears the sticker runner’… beautiful in its simplicity, to ‘its wings are splinted now’, about your heart. How the pieces of you, so poetically make the whole! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you!
I love how you’ve illustrated this concept. This is such a pleasure to read!
Thank you!
Wow… one of my favorites. I’d love to re-read it and put myself in each stanza… Great work.. A must for the anthology!
Thank you!
@britton, I absolutely loved this poem of yours, so deeply touched! I’m going to post this on the FB group so others can also come read this gem!
I am so happy other folks relate to this. It always makes me sad when we limit people with labels, and I feel better, now that I ‘wrote it out’… Don’t we always? 😘