The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2009

Stripped Bare

In the city you find litter in trees, long bandages swaying,

white strips of shaggy plastic, shoes flung over phonelines,

wisteria pods clacking in the breeze, the remnants of takeout

meals accompanying their screechy clamshells, detritus in motion.

The poem tries to collect itself, checks to see if scabs are in place,

fingers calculating pulse and bandages wound tight, thoughts

filed away, the containers spilling over, nothing coherent, palimpsests

examined for words that might cohere into breath, or image.

The time it takes to peel an apple in slow, circular unwrappings,

a scalpel might uncover the layers of a brain, still attached

to the cadaver, and inside find scraps of paper, notes for lyric

poems, bandages to stop the flow, keeping out the world.

Sharon Olson