Thalidomide

O half moon—-

Half-brain, luminosity—-

Negro, masked like a white,

Your dark

Amputations crawl and appall—-

Spidery, unsafe.

What glove

What leatheriness

Has protected

Me from that shadow—-

The indelible buds.

Knuckles at shoulder-blades, the

Faces that

Shove into being, dragging

The lopped

Blood-caul of absences.

All night I carpenter

A space for the thing I am given,

A love

Of two wet eyes and a screech.

White spit

Of indifference!

The dark fruits revolve and fall.

The glass cracks across,

The image

Flees and aborts like dropped mercury.