Nature's Tat†Øo

Her Scar

BY PETER SPAGNUOLO

Remember me: the murmuring lips half said
in half-light, buried in the hollow
a boy’s neck made, as now inside his head
they stir again, though twenty years swallow
the purest parts of her, all but her plea,
this taunt—what act from him could it command?
The boy who’d know is gone—Re-member me—
but what man can assemble limbs, make stand
again those legs that twined in his, or hitch
the yoke of hips to sway and resurrect
a girl? I try, but only recollect
her scar—each lewd, profaning, cautered stitch—
vermiform, red, furrowed belly to breast:
where nights, long past, he’d laid his head in rest.
Source: Poetry (October 2010).