the pencil hairs that score your chest
like tv snow on the old tube set
my grandmother smacked during storms
soften the knock of your arrhythmia.
still the dull iambs greet my fingers as
I trace the sorrow of your collarbone.
if I could reach into a ventricle
to part your red seas I could be sold
for silver coins and jump for joy as the Romans wept.
what you ask of the body, what you take from it:
your nakedness in the mirror
a thin road of flesh
to separate a prognosis
and the machinery.