"pain has, or can at least sometimes find, form."
~Maggie Nelson
Flat & Hollow
Pain has form
molds itself
flat on the front
of the daily news
Silly Putty flat
pink peeling off
a black & white
duplicate
of violence.
We hold it, stretch it,
the words
killed last night
manipulated by dirty
finger tips,
those l's strangling us
into skewed horizontal.
Words woman found
naked in field adjoining mall
press into pink solidness
flattened by our thumb,
fleshy witness
to what's left out:
below her waist,
a blackened space
hollowed out
like eyes sucked dry
by cavernous night,
her edges traced with a blade
to find light.
