Spectacle: Possession

Spectacle: Possession

1

A woman wears a blue dress. It is
Sunday. Red cardinal sing
along the sill. She cuts
her neck with an electric
carving knife. A woman is blue.
She is red. She wears
the Sunday blues. Carves
cardinals into an electric
red dress. Her neck
sings electric. Sunday wears on.
A knife sings before it cuts.
On the sill, Sunday carves
the necks of cardinals. Knives
wear red. Sunday dresses
along the sill. Sing
said the cardinal.
Sing said the knife.
A woman is electric.
Her neck is a sill.
Cardinal sing the Sunday
reds in her electric neck.
A woman is carving.
A woman is a knife.
A woman.

2

A woman rises to a knock at her door,
a stone strikes her head as her ex-
husband plunges in, clutching
a rock and a carving
knife. He can't cope
with a prefix meaning no longer
or lacking so he whittles it
from her forehead, criss-
crossing her face with a blade
made for slicing steak.

Their thirteen-year-old daughter witnesses,
from a corner, strapped to her
shadow in shock, her mouth
open, spilling the word stop
that circles the room in a boomerang
returning to splinter her throat, her father's
ears. The man looks up from his white
shirt, Rolex, ox-blood Gucci shoes
splashed with his ex-wife and says
I'm sorry to his daughter as the woman's
breath jags from collapsed lungs.

3

I am always burying something:
cardinals with shattered wings,
orange peels, smell of your dress
as it dries on the windowsill.

You come to me bearing
poppies, birds and glass,
a carving knife.
Your body a hieroglyph.

You want me to whittle you
down into an amulet;
a tooth necklace to
wear as a token.

In the kitchen's carnivorous light,
you and I are too much alike;
the skull's opalescent curve,
milkweed smelling skeleton,

bones tattered as lace.
Like lightening. Electric.
When i move you carve yourself out of me

humming the mean reds
and the Sunday blues.
Sing says the birds.
Sing says the bones.


~Simone Muench