Peel: Carracks of Coffinwood

 

Navegar é preciso; viver não é preciso.  –F. Pessoa

She sits, vanity lit,

seeking a seam somewhere to slide the knife

-a small, warm window

-a toehold on her life.

Sweaty zoetropes gattle lead lines through eyes and past.

Vultures sail on currents of a focus holding fast.

Somehow to slip the skin, denude the stranger who faces the world

and run in salmon robes with trembling jewels

but rip the hem to swim in circles

or rise to pools of limpid perfection.

She longs to peel into a place where hearts hang like apples

and build a carrack of coffinwood.

Her blade, it seeks to kilter rage

revolving round deceit.

She bleeds, she seethes,

she learns to breathe

and grinds from spleen her meat

that riddles future in complete

remonstrance. Tapeworm wreaths

of greener grass

are scratched in glass

and tempered into sheathes

for minds and eyes that seek to teethe

on chaos; tame the mass

of vacant drums,

discordant thrums

that seed her mouth with brass.