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Petting the Scar
- Wesleyan University Press
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Petting the Scar —for Alicia Ostriker You know what? I don't want a brave death, faithful children mopping up after my body, sweet thing, nubbly fissures and skin so soft it's silklike. Let my daughter wail at the side of her lover's bed, her heart in its tough covering beating powdery as a butterfly's wing. My son, oh no, let him turn up his torso to the Greek sun, his heartscar sexy, raised on his dark skin. So what are weto do tonight, finished with passion, roaming our rooms, our thumbs hooked under the spines of books, notebooks by each chair, forbidden smokes flushed and fats scoured away? You tell me to reach under my shirt and pet the scar. Did you hear about the lozenge of blood on the binding of our friend's new book, who is trying hard in a far country? I forgot to tell you. "If I can bear to touch it," she said. "Yet," surely you'd add. Under my robe—I must put down my pen to do it-— my palm finds chill: this is not a metaphor but an image, true, a fact: I swear it. No pouty lip the color of eyelids. A cold blank. 52 But the scar! Riverroad, meandering root, stretched coil, wire chord, embroidery in its hoop, mine, my body. Oh, love! 53 ...