Splayed before the white plastic table

two hearts an orifice several ears a hue & a small cloud

all a mess and amiss like a lava lamp.

Through the eye of a golden needle

she sees the sun and threads silver & copper,

gets to sewing a lung back to a torso,

a stomach to a gut, with the care of a gardener.

She mends through flesh & dream 

and sews her fingers into her own left hand.

One time she accidentally put an eye on an ass.

On a shelf she keeps extra tissue in a petri dish &

spare eyes inside a jar, sometimes sews a third one

right onto a patient’s forehead.

She collects a paycheck and waits,

like everyone else, for the rain to smell.

 

|||

 

Paco Márquez is a poet based out of Manhattan, author of Portraits in G Minor (Folded Word Press, 2017). His poems can be found in Fence, Apogee, Live Mag! and Huizache. As Spanish Editor for William O’Daly, Paco was fundamental in bringing Pablo Neruda’s initial book, Crepuscualrio, for the first time into English as, Book of Twilight (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). Originally from León, México, Paco has spent most of his life in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. Find out more at: pacomarquez.net

 

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