Polaroid Picture of a Face Before Rigor Mortis Sets in
For my Father
This corpse is sculpted
Like Rodin hands –
hands with history, bristling, barking fingers
of caprice and tenderness.
Now, that is something Rilke would write.
I write stuff,
mostly abrupt prose in the guise of a poem
assemble words like morgue –
and metatarsal, hoping for a radical
bonhomie of sorts.
I grope the dead, for nocturnal
conversations:
brazen but intimate,
along the lines of arteries and veins,
bleeding its bluest blue.
I also write about the synovial joint and patella.
These are the words I remember
among other words
that are faint and feeble,
calligraphed on a prescription letter.
(cranium
and mandible)
This is how I recognise bones from people,
Dads from Doctors — who show
their daughters
polaroid pictures of faces before
rigor mortis sets in.