WWW: The Sadness of Bodies

Take a tongue, how deftly it darts out

at an errant crumb anywhere near the mouth, unthinking,

arrowlike in its accuracy, but try finding a lost word

and it’s stuck, so thick with thought, beefy, I want to say,

remembering the Genoa Delicatessen the time the woman next to me

ordered tongue, and the counterman held up a slab the size of a small arm.

It makes you wonder how to hold your own flesh, suddenly

three buckets too much, baggage or sausage, perhaps

the friend of a friend you met once

who can’t quite manage to embrace you, the way ribs

never make it all the way around,

stopping short, nothing like the serious stuff up there

where the skull encases its armadillo pillows, leaving the poor heart

almost wide open in its cage.

[…]

Barbara Ras, The Sadness of Bodies