POEM OF THE DAY
My Only Sunshine
You are my sunshine,
a swatch of blue sky torn from the scrapbook
of cancelled heavens and hung
in my window.
You make me happy.
When my eyes are ready to give birth,
you hand me the scalpel,
oh sacred heart,
and lead this blindman into the surgery.
You scratch crosses
on my skeleton made of loaded dice,
you snatch the caul
from the stillbirth,
you leave me
the abortion
of a closed eye.
When skies are blue
I am ready to tailor the vessels of my love
to a new pattern,
I am ready with scientific zeal
to test the grail,
I am ready to see my blood
well up in the mouth of the blue leech
who can not drink.
Please don’t take, sunshine, your knife away.
In this time of assasins,
my blood shall be the skirl of rust
along the edge, the snake
in the mirror, that freezes
the chameleons.
My only sunshine,
whipcord of glories,
lightning vein streaked across my clenched eyes,
signature in the bloodlight
of my retinas.
You thong,
pared down to a penumbral ghost chord
on which I strop my tears,
bind me lightly, by upheld wrists
to this life;
chafe this skin full of words
with your beveled kiss,
erase the stigmata,
sand down my calluses,
break open this alphabet.
Dana Pattillo, 1990
(PoD 10)
7:53:20 PM 
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