Bloodletting is Beautiful:

by Roberta Greifer

Drowning in skin,
Punctured in
A wilderness of sheets,
A piece of you still lingers in my prison of
Teeth.

Now
At a wooden dinner,
Your eyes are firing squads
Across the mashed potatoes,
And we pretend the amputation is
Complete.

My glittering assassin,
Blow-by-blow
Prepacked in a box,
You wanted my advertisement of
Lips,
And a hardness chained to watches
Is irreducible as
Bone.

Your ego dangles like a naked light bulb;
My smile is sociable
Hysteria.