Cassandra Carter


 
Home Remedies with Concave Instruments

I can’t stop cutting my feet

The skin in the corners, the nails growing crucifixion crooked
The after-Patroclus-is-murdered Achilles heels

I use pear knives on the wrinkles
Fresh car keys on the arches
Pink machetes on the parts I can’t name

I cut them smaller and thinner, into uglier shoes

I think about cutting them at night

On the moon with garden shears
My toe blood freezes, doesn’t sticky carpet to carpet
My toe blood is a dead pond, doesn’t ocean or sea

There is so much toe blood, hiding

Waiting to be cut out

 
Garden of You

I.

I bathe among the roses
waterfalling from your mouth

You are so lovely now,
and practical, strung by spine
into the spigot above
my claw tub

II.

Violets bloom from your wrists
each morning, fresh and dewed
with blood perfumed and lush

Deep purple in my oatmeal
Plucked local from bedroom garden
of you

My physicians say my heart
has never beat better

III.

I do not skin your throat
apples. Flesh so supple
and crisp my teeth leak
red and pale and drunk

You are so delicious now,
and healthy. Good for
my heart and jaw

IV.

Your sunflowers grow
curled into my bed,
thanking me

Always the gracious gardener,
I tongue open
your seeds

Motel Art

Upon cracking
your skull
     open,

I find
your brain,
     wrinkled,

like      a rose.

 


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