The crevice is a scenery
of black birds
& the hands that broke
their wings.

Winter wires
the glass with trees,
their branches
a drip of cobwebs:

the fly figure
spills the gurgle of
throats in the last ward
down the hall.

Objects are often
broken in anger,
or by the scissored
thread of fate.

Old wives paint
their obsession with
pain, the childbirth
gone wrong

in shades of milk
& fire elements,
the arrow that leeched
Christ’s rib.

Then, the inability
to hold a fountain pen
upright over
a laid billet doux.

Here is the thirst
known only to dying men:
a tunnel of mirrors
cracked from side to side.

 

Copyright © Arlene Ang, 2005.

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Arlene Ang lives in Venice, Italy and edits Poetry Niederngasse’s Italian edition.