The Forger Anatomizes Some Parts

As in the game where with tweezers one tries to circumvent the charge that makes the buzzer ring. The plastic wishbone. Heart-shaped heart. I was taught the inner ropes, then how to drape on skin. My son was scared to play. His body image was enmorcelé, broken into bits. I tried to reassemble him but didn’t have a recipe for paste. As in the spongy, soggy shapes kids press scraps of paper on to make a mask. The finch’s progeny got lost in broken shells. The bodies must have been devoured. Sparkless, my work was called. Dead. It does not breathe. But yes and yes: I loved the homophone of hole and whole. The tunnel burrowed down in me. I tried to make it live.

ANN KENISTON

Ann Keniston’s recent poems have appeared in Yale Review, Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of a full-length book of poems (The Caution of Human Gestures, Wordtech 2005) and a chapbook (November Wasps, Finishing Line, 2013), as well as several scholarly books on contemporary American poetry. She lives in Reno, NV, where she is a professor of English at University of Nevada, Reno.