April Winter
Wire-strung words transmit requests for prayer.
The assassin returns, aims, strikes vulnerability,
recalls your mother caught in the crosshairs,
sights daughter pain across soft milk flesh
targets an inheritance the size of a plum.
Telephone sadness flat frozen words-hang.
I melt them in outrage.
We're the same age.
What is plum-sized? Metastasized?
Is it life-sized or death-sized?
How dare this sniper stake out these hills
hide landmines along lymph-routes
to your song-caves below?
How will you conceal scars or disguise flat notes
of half-breasted hope?
What do you ask of me in this pole-to-pole silence?
Should I full of doubt, challenge this skilled marksman?
I'd rather you request that I train as a spy,
wear camouflage, search the net for cures and surgeons.
Instead you desire my faith,
will me to stand out-stretched
between you and our arsenal of weaponry.
I allow my sobs and syllables
to become audible whispers on your behalf,
Gently I cradle your words
hand-held cellular proof
prayer has twisted into melody lines
engraved in tissue its measure of praise.
Wire-strung words transmit requests for prayer.
The assassin returns, aims, strikes vulnerability,
recalls your mother caught in the crosshairs,
sights daughter pain across soft milk flesh
targets an inheritance the size of a plum.
Telephone sadness flat frozen words-hang.
I melt them in outrage.
We're the same age.
What is plum-sized? Metastasized?
Is it life-sized or death-sized?
How dare this sniper stake out these hills
hide landmines along lymph-routes
to your song-caves below?
How will you conceal scars or disguise flat notes
of half-breasted hope?
What do you ask of me in this pole-to-pole silence?
Should I full of doubt, challenge this skilled marksman?
I'd rather you request that I train as a spy,
wear camouflage, search the net for cures and surgeons.
Instead you desire my faith,
will me to stand out-stretched
between you and our arsenal of weaponry.
I allow my sobs and syllables
to become audible whispers on your behalf,
Gently I cradle your words
hand-held cellular proof
prayer has twisted into melody lines
engraved in tissue its measure of praise.