Segmenting the Caterpillar

I.

Sometimes, there is a body without eyes
and vertebrae. You see it lying there:
heap of fascia on browned grass. Dead,
so dead it scares the hell out of you.
And you run like a child, run so far you forget,
forget that this will haunt you
one day, phantom your dreams,
carry you back
to the place where you first saw it,
first felt your insides as something real,
something unforgivable–

the site of that body in the sallow
grass.

II.

To the room with the broken door,
I leave you this:
Baloney curls and ugly sheets,
devils dancing in the paneling
chanting “Come with me,
come with me.”

A picture folded and placed
on the bed of the child who floats on the ceiling.
I snapped it, just as the light started to recede.
And the mice,
I leave you the mice--
their incessant scratching, their tiny toe nails
that I plucked out, one-at-a-time.
You will find them in the closet,
stashed beneath the summer towels
and out-grown things, they’ve kept
well there.

III.

She was on the cover:
       Girl Missing
the outline of her cheek smudged
almost invisible into the setting.

Have you noticed how edgeless
papers have become? Midway through the words
you’ve lost the story, so you flip back
to the picture, the one on the cover
and you look at it, you look at her–
seraphic with molting wings,
as if she had already fallen
away from herself, as if

those wings had ever really existed.

©  Maria Lupinacci 2005


This poem published in Wicked Alice Poetry Journal - Fall 4th Anniversary Issue.