Melanie Challenger
The Bath
I wear the day on my body like a prayer-scarf,
in the plush flesh of the fold, in the pit’s raw underclay,
skin-quills and smog-tufts trap the millions
of this city, mid-threshing children of Pompeii,
as my knee’s napped flag bears
in its downward wing the silt of yesterday’s jeans,
and my toes’ shunned cribs are surrogate-dens
for graphite-dust, alluvia, grass-hairs.
This and me, me as the alloy of beef
and star-smelt, glide into the bath’s almost blue,
freeing a slick of the universe’s wizardy stuff.
And from such crack and wrench grow
thick shimmery silkthreads of matter, blood’s putty,
with murex-knots of life-givingness
moving stately as deepsea jellyfish, all my
prodigals beginning their leaving of me.
Melanie Challenger is a librettist and writer. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005.
Page(s) 70
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