Isis Prepares for Resurrection

your touch
doesn't feel my flesh
but finds my bracelet instead
a ring of nehessi copper turning my wrist
green like an old woman's arthritic arm
verdant from too much copper

you draw
moonlight towards you
curling sea brass etched with
platinum scars the eye of the ankh
an anaconda's coil a chorus
of life and death
I whisper it is just

a bracelet
but your eyes are far
from ornamental you have
trekked the distance orbitted earth
and your ears understand
the chained circumference of my upturned palm

this dawn
with both wrists naked
we alone touch a copper band
its pattern like some faint fertility symbol
breath echoing at the source of our hand
we are singing

tenné
to draw poison out
copper to extract a name
I will travel centuries to kiss
your eyes but cast this arc instead
an alchemical fusion of distance
part covenant part bone

Nehassaiu de Gannes, a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, received the M.A. degree from Temple University and studied creative writing at Brown University. A member of the Dark Room Collective, she was born in Trinidad.

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