cardiothoracic

i had become a financier
when the spider crawled from my marrow:
thou art  a retrieveless larcener
i awoke to the adder’s firmest bliss
then his crumpled mien
when i hastened to wash
repent
turn myself into a butterfly—
ananias

*

the surgeon dipped a tincture from his urn—
i licked it off his finger—
just fix me please

*

paper plane across the room
staple this claim to your chest:
flowers            planets            faces                all fickle
but ananias hovers around his cenotaph
the adder slinks into the urn
the surgeon’s thread
a pungent soak of iodine
closes your chest up tight

Lara Candland's book of poems <Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree> is forthcoming from Blaze Vox in the Winter of 2010. Her work has appeared in Fence, The Colorado Review, Barrow Street, The Quarterly and other journals.  She is a co-founder and chief librettist for Seattle Experimental Opera.

 
Copyright © 2010 by Lara Candland, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.