Jessica
Stitches
Incision, I inspect you
daily, watch as angry
slivers of skin meet
in the middle, knit
together. I imagine
what happens below
the surface. Infections
rise and subside, cowed
by white blood cells. Scabs
transform my skin
into a new numb
topography. The doctor
tells me to keep you
dry, protect you against
invisible elements. (She
is a protective mother,
codling you in infancy.)
As surrogate, I can only
do my best, not
to touch you, scratch
you. It’s a matter of time
before you fade,
like your forebears. You
will be a silver streak,
a silhouette. I will not
remember you as you are:
my constant, terrible gash.
*****
I wrote this last night, in preparation for my upcoming writer’s group meeting. I’ve been worried that I have too many half-finished drafts and not enough poems. I forced myself to sit down and write and complete a draft of a poem, rather than tweeting the lines as they come to me and composing them on paper later.
As much as I like the tweeting process, it’s almost too instantaneous for me. I feel like it’s finished and out in the world, maybe when it’s too early for either. When I was in college, I took a poetry workshop with Denise Levertov right before she died. She encouraged us to never type up our poems until they were absolutely, positively finished. She felt that if we saw them somewhat professionally presented on the page, we wouldn’t revise. In many ways, I agree with her.
Since she died later that year, she obviously missed the explosion of online expression and self-publishing. I wonder what she would think.
