[March/April 2008]
Tikkun Magazine, March/April 2008
POETRY
Body Text
by David Gewanter
"CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING"—Acme Matches
Toe speckled with blood, sour blush of spirit,
the villager's thumb smashed blue
from hammering evil thoughts into
the Yoruba totem man:
his marble eye and smile of bone
float above the indigestible belly
of griefs that the townsfolk
have fed him nail by nail....
A baby fights gravity to stand; her body
lists and yaws, begins its life of self-correction
so that later, if she slashes her wrists
and chokes down all the pills—
still, they are anti-coagulants;
she wakes up alive but scabby.
Unversed in poetic justice,
the body forgives
but can't forget. We used to read it slowly:
during the ancient wars, a messenger
could dawdle weeks in camp
until his hair grew back,
hiding the map tattooed on his scalp.
Now we pay for our figures:
when the dictator proclaims
"the future's in your hands,"
rebels chop off a thousand arms,
asking the victims, "short sleeve or long sleeve"—
Shall our bodies grow innocent again?
We have cleansed ourselves, planting
crimes in the spongy flesh of our teachers:
open to our mistakes, their skin absorbs
every fault, a body's true instruction:
the botched colon and missing period,
the "terminally disorganized
Appendix"-: Our problems plump
their calf and moon, their dimpled
pedimental haunches that
waggle up the schoolhouse stairs,
these simple men of Hobbes, swimming against
a student whaleherd of Rousseau—
In summer, teachers moonlight
as customs inspectors...credulous,
starved for human histories, they swallow
cock and bull tales, and let through
the satchelfuls of drugs
that later dim their students—
Tonight, older than the yearbook images
gaping back at us, we compose ourselves
in sleep, walking the error of our ways
amidst the smiling, still handsome
schoolmasters of our youth, now voided of us.
Knowledge settles back like dust
inside the mouth, blue dust of berries
by night, bleaching at dawn
to fine chalk, or ash.
Source CitationGewanter, David. 2008. Body text. Tikkun 23(2):79.
