Language under Skin

                           for Lucille

 

What the body felt

when it saw the god no god

in a cinema from black & white to color

& what the body felt to see black hanging from a tree

black & white &  red

white watching, even a little girl with her white doll,

black doll dying    red dripping    like hog killing day   

like the hams hung up in the smokehouse to cure.

It’s not hard to tell the difference.

 

Life travels a map of the world

taking the body along for the ride.

There are seven continents--

Africa is a continent you know--

it’s not hard to tell the difference.

Life mimics the oceans & deserts

more alike than not, the sea & the sea of sand.

One little speck, your body in the world

all bodies do not rise but yours does,

it leaps from star to star to star

as if they are ice floes.  Trying to get somewhere.

 

What the body feels beneath its skin

is the new moon language of the world

of all bodies everywhere,

all skins speaking the same shade of blue.

So it is very hard to tell the difference.

 

                  -----------Ernie Wormwood

 

 Ernie Wormwood is a writer and teacher whose work has been in The Cafe Review, Rhino, Upstage, and the anthologies Poetic Voices Without Borders and Only the Sea Keeps.  She lives in Leonardtown, Maryland.

 

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content © - Ernie Wormwood
music: Raga - Jaunpuri © - Bismillah Khan
image source -  US Department of State website