Dear Millennium, Soliloquy of a Rogue Body Politic
       

Artificial hearts and lung machines, pixie fem-bots
                    or jugular stents
offer a second chance at physiological vitality—
                                        a sojourn of new damage orbiting
                    double-blind witness to trauma,
                                                refuge and refugee of flesh
ravaged in war, famine, or a rogue body politic
                    slain on a substrate of race
                              or a soliloquy of heartbreak,
this fractured allegory of blood cells
                                                pearled in song, this body's
                    dimmed sanctuary, its broken throats of lilies.
Indigenous wisdom says, for heartbreak—
                        drop a whetting stone in water overnight.
Do not soak knives or scissors, only a blunt stone
                                                                          for grinding.
Wake. Drink swiftly.
This quick cure severs
                              the shiftless who cut you to the heart.
                    And it is free.

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Copyright © 2019 Karen An-Hwei Lee All rights reserved
from Poetry Northwest
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission