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      October 8, 2008BruisesMark Halperin

      When my dog stopped short to inspect
      a dead owl’s carcass, I fell right, avoiding
      her, and to break my landing, stretched
      a hand out. It swelled, but never ached,
      and I thought I had escaped unscathed.
      Trying to make a fist, each finger comes
      around except the fat and reddened pinky.

      Add it to a growing list of minor injuries,
      my rap-sheet. Could it be you don’t fail
      all at once, but suffer bruises first, then
      your hair falls, sores refuse to heal, creases
      deepen into clefts, crevasses and you go
      limp below? Maybe you give and give
      until, exhausted, you’ve nothing left to—

      strip-poker player down to losing skin.
      Who’s that caricature with the rosette
      nose, drooping flesh and lumpy fingers,
      sliding toward a flat event-horizon? Is
      there no seeing past it? Now I pare
      my body down, where the shavings,
      thinner and sheerer, curl and disappear.

      from #23 - Summer 2005