Utamaro
The body is a camouflage in all these
Japanese neurochemicals, it's snowing patterns of dots
& mazes & crosshatches of looking all around
city blocks to find that lover who will make your soul
recognize itself in the world of concrete annoyances
& you can call it art, or the opposite of dying...
It doesn't matter that your hand is only the weight
of a single orange, because when it's gone
the absence is that much lighter, a blank piece of paperless the weight of words, herringbone thoughts.
W.B. Keckler
Copyright © 2003
W.B. Keckler's Sanskrit of the Body won in the National Poetry Series (2002) and has been published by Penguin. It's available online at Amazon.com and other sites, or at a chain-chain-chain bookstore near you.