“I do not know if hurt is my birthright”— Jason B. Crawford
knuckle withholds an English suffering,
clenched in fierce strain.
my unsheathed hands, hurled spacelike,
knifing a worship.
there are times my loin becomes a violation of religion:
object to be cast out.
times agony was in vogue.
here, my rib aligns to a wounded score arrowed by grace, like endnotes.
gravity lifts anguish towards the mouth.
a prayer undone.
teeth tightening a default sorrow,
gnashed in the way a plectrum to my vein
spew blues, when honed afresh.
we run out of anguish, fisting a rhythm out of wrath.
I untuck my palm, rummaging for a tender torture,
an ache sufficient to match my hardship.
still, my loin hymns an awful song.
my rib, strung into a French harp.
accident seems the rawest kind of harmony:
weight— injured into hemorrhage.
‘I long to be damaged way out of the ordinary.’
look how we phrase a casualty shuttling in between violence & voice.
the ghastly lyric: a killer tune.
rough decibel smashed onto our jawline.
the neat chaos,
a wounded melody.
no one born of reed should suffer this long.
