Initiation #5: Lorca
       

He is standing at the foot of my bed
with an insanely tragic smile and a syringe
full of lead. He is sitting beside me
in a bloodless body, stroking the pink sheets
with eyes like a fruit that's never in season.
Burning casinos and countries I'll never visit
pass over the room. I am here
to learn how to suffer more beautifully.
Outside, at the bus stop, thin men in scrubs
read about nanobots, and maybe they can map
the malignant cells unspooling in my marrow,
or the best, fastest path of a bullet entering the chest.
Inside, in another dimension, we are riding
two lame mares to the pasture where I am
ravaged by centaur after centaur, never a satyr.
Bodies matter, how they break open,
which animals we let inside us. I am here
to learn how to suffer more beautifully,
to smile for the white air and give everything away.

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Copyright © 2014 Kara Candito All rights reserved
from Spectator
University of Utah Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission