Switched-on Gutenberg Issue 18
Corpus
 
 
Body Farm

 

Rise:               The last
thing you ate
was a small smidge
of birthday cake.
Fall:                Now you swell
and molder
on an army
green tarp.
Rise:               A raccoon raked
your chest open
like a bag of
potato chips
last night
Fall:                but sometimes
your sun-dappled
breast still looks like
it is....
Rise:               While I
was watching,
your neighbor,
Number 27,
shimmied then popped
his bloated tongue
pressed into the ground.
Fall:                I long to flick
the small spider
traversing the length
of your belly,
Rise:               a monk pressing on
across the desert
thirsty, but
resigned.

 


 
 
 
 
 
Hand
from Henry Gray (1825–1861).Anatomy of the Human Body. http://www.bartleby.com

Copyright 2012, Kelly Fordon

Kelly Fordon’s work has appeared in The Kenyon Review (KRO), NPR’s This I Believe, Flashquake, The Windsor Review and various other journals. Her poetry chapbook, On The Street Where We Live, won the 2011 Stranding Rock Chapbook Contest. She is currently working towards her MFA in fiction writing at Queens University . www.kellyfordon.com.


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