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Indelible Ink
- University of Arkansas Press
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Indelible Ink In this time of tattoos, when so many give their bodies To the mutilating needle, as fashion or manifesto, And not just a drunken dare gone wrong at midnight, I feel the word Pain tattooed across my spine, in letters That look the way the German language sounds— Barbed wire in the jaw, every syllable cranked up to blood. The poor twist in their hovels, feeding on beans and burnt anger. The wounded-in-war shovel themselves ahead on sticks and wheels. Doesn’t the Constitution guarantee us all the right to pain and pity? When I walk, I list to one side, Igor hunched over in heavy steps. It hurts when I lie down. It hurts when I sit. It hurts when I stand up. The nerve goes through my leg like an awl in a plank of fresh cedar. In my neck, in my chest, the spine’s held together by a small cage Of crushed cadaver bone and a brace of titanium struts and screws. At the bottom, a swollen knob sends signals of distress to the brain. • • • 48 Here’s a pill to make the mind mumble sweet greetings to itself. And here’s a pill to open the bowels the other pills have blocked. And the doctors prod and congregate and lay out their nasty instruments. There’s ink on my hands and on the page and on the traitor backbone, Too deep for the acids of erasure, for the burr of flesh-eating steel. Dear friends and family, forgive me: I’m waiting to be rescued from myself. 49 • • • ...