I like to cut my flesh with razors, watch the blood drip, bang my arm until it hurts more than I can stand. To the girl who scribbled this message on the bathroom wall of the King’s Head Pub, Vancouver You can also use the sharp slant of scissors, nail clippers, broken shards of glass found in a church parking lot. It’s your skin, after all. It holds all of you together, a once-in-a-lifetime real leather bag. Bones and blood and dreams, discoveries of who in this world you are, peppermint tea, burnt crusts of red meat, the last memories of your lover, his rush in and out of your veins, the birdseed you let fly in the yard the day you decided to start collecting feathers. It keeps all of this warm in the flow from your neck to shinbones, ribs to scars, the scratches of your scarlet signature. Use your grandmother’s knitting needles if they are steel and sharp, her crochet hooks. Hell, you could even use the split edge of this table. Slide your inner arm against the jagged grain, watch the splinters scrape you raw. You’d be almost divine, maybe even easier to love.
Skin Graffiti
Subscribe to Geist! |
Comments (2)
Comment FeedAmy Dennis poem
Robert Anderson more than 2 years ago
Skin Graffiti Amy Dennis
Leanne Schneider more than 2 years ago