Masterwork
       

I give over, undoing like a knapsack,

snaking out my intestines
before the rest pours from its own gravity—

splashes of bile, the soft thud
of the liver, a lung, wet and papery.

Here all valves open and close,
muscles contract. Arteries like twist ties.

Someone else would catalogue
the destruction. But you untie

your bundle too, flooding the heap
with fluid and organs, the vast ugly stew.

Our ribs and fingers, thighs and shoulders
tie themselves into stronger triangles, form

a great, dripping tower filled
with nothing but energy, the crash

of drop against drop , fleck on fleck:
brightness.

See our building—strong, shiny,
almost on fire—bones become arches,

anchor stones in place. We stretch, pull.
Watch without thumping blood

or greedy lungs this labor of a universe.
We liquefy, fuse inside the tower

like epoxy: spinning,
spinning, hot on our intangible axis.

Touch then—our building moves, expands,
the mixture around an internal sun,

the mass and speed. Fully realized
in each turn , we call light into dark, and know
how whole can become further whole.
We are the flash of the dance's leg, the slice

of the painter's shadow, the sway of a black hole.
We are the thing that can't be taught.

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Copyright © 2016 Callista Buchen All rights reserved
from The Bloody Planet
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission