Three, a healing narrative.
"Fragments attract each other, a swarm of iron filings
black with golden flecks but without a soul.
I stroke them with my finger so they scatter then
relax in correspondence, in the involuntary response
to being touched on a plate.
Against the tree, a woman is pinned, upright and strung
with lights or gunpowder flares and nodes.
Who stuck her there?
Her body is covered with mud and at the same time
possesses the invisible force of an architectural element
encountered in the post-war structure.
Did I literally give her life?
I wrote about her body, the vertical grave
she created in my mind and in the minds of anyone
who heard about her.
This anonymous and delicate box.
This imprint, this mental animal,
this veil of charcoal and vermilion powder,
smudged to form a curtain of hair
falling over the face like an animal almost in flight
but possessed, restricted, to the band of Earth
that precedes the border or follows it, depending
on which way you cross.
The woman stares, focusing on a point.
Someone else is staring too.
Can you smell her burning fur?"