Each month, I post one of my best poems exclusively to my poetry patrons in Patreon. Among other benefits (more details here), they get the poem 90 days before I release it to the rest of the world.
Today is blog publication day for this poem, first written and posted three months ago, inspired by one of my daughter's friends. She is the “I” in the poem.
It's about pain and healing and the consolations of art and making.
I hope you enjoy.
After You
I pluck the splinters,
mirror and glass,
from the piercings in my feet,
and shins,
and hands and limbs.
I wipe the blood,
then line them up
and with a black hammer,
smash them, one and all
into tiny chips and flakes.
I glue them, then
jags indented,
round and top
into a rough sphere,
leave overnight to set
add more again.
Four days of work, daylight and dark,
with clear glass and opaque mirror
shavings glued together
in blind silence
until they form a solid orb
twice as big and weighty
as a human head.
Now, with steel wool, I buff and polish,
more hours unending, evening out the edges,
till the surface shines, smooth and lustrous
and I am the proud possessor
of a cracked and gleaming moon.
All done, I add a chain
and next, with ladder placed
dead center in the room,
I climb to the top, step by slow step,
my glimmering globe
embraced by arms and chest.
Looking into it, I catch sight of my face
reflected, splinter-formed.
It makes me buckle. Teeter,
but I hold my fall
find hook and clasp the chain.
There. It's hung.
I climb down.
feet flat to floor,
body already beginning to sway,
I line up the vinyl record,
set it to spin its music,
connect the needle.
A crackle, then it sings its
siren call. I give myself up
to the beat that once–
when we were each other's all-in-all–
was ours. And shimmy now
alone, in the shards of light
thrown by my newmade disco ball.
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