Renée Rossi Three Poems

After a Line of Rilke’s

Are we here to collect the unlived linesin our bodies, Linnaeus’ named tragedies,chordae tendinae heart stringsin their infinite rupturings…
My neighbor fell dead in Detroit snowshoveling imagination’s recesses. Large,with his red-nosed rhinophyma and sorrowdraped across a loosely knitted scarf.
Gestures made to falling snow framedby a window. Tonight, the mind’s rheostatis adjusted to memory. The blue heron glides over us with that long painful cry…
As to the question of whether we are hereto make something or to abide,the wood turner patiently turns woodin his shed, cuts heartwood with his lathe.
I feel no irregularities in this cherry and birch bowl rubbed downwith tongue oil and still holding.
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#16

She is tagged number sixteen,a small bullet hole in her right flank,the day her dark hand grips mine,white and fine and drained.Blood pours into the thick veinunder the arch of her collar bone.
“Will I make it?” she whisperssqueezing my palm.Outside, we scrub hands rawto erase her words,glove to insulate, mask to avoidinhaling the fear
spreading in waves from a thin,nameless frame on a metal bed.And we plunge into her belly,thick with ooze from her liverirreparably torn away.She sleeps peacefully.
The recorder in my headplays a lullabyover and over until it thrumsto the sweep of my handsstitching a woundthat will never heal.
The snap of latex glovesseals the lid of her coffinas she’s wheeled out to a shelf in the morgue. The hand I last held hangslimply, over the gurney’s edge.
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Acha Man With Woman

Lying on the table of our bedwe are twomummies in training.Our eyeballsstrain to seebeyond the dust of their sockets.Your breathing,an accordion for lung,brushes the Luna moth’sdive. This oddassemblyof what we are. Proteinsdissolvinginto one another. They’ll have to pry usapart, fetal embraced,bloodstill coursing our live marrows.