Mercy (poem)

Mercy

You might be the bitter pith

Your green unripe skin rasped away

Your head shaped like a human skull

Bone-colored, soft as a sponge and impressible

Eating awkward lunches

An object at the table

A centerpiece blocking the view

All eyes track and scatter delineating the dot dot dot

of your monolithic leadenness

You, with your brainstem stuffed

Might be a dried rose debauched by brown withering

Preserved as a treasured thing

Decomposition’s finger in the house unheeded

Jabbed into the florist’s foam

You are not the Christmas tinsel flaming dangerously

near the candle

You are ripening slowly

You may have trusted them at first

Standing waist-deep, grasped the line and waited patiently

Now the weight is heavy

Now you see finally that the open door is guarded

Your faith is shaped like water

A drop reflects a world quivering

from the clap of a dog’s bark

Mercy

The Tunnel

(2015, Stephanie Foster)