Meditation on a Poem about Glass Embedded in the Scalp after a Car Accident
“You live through all of it, the impact,
the moment absorbed in the body”
–Luke Bauerlein
the moment absorbed in the body”
–Luke Bauerlein
The poet writes about shards,
how his body kept them, skin
grew over and eventually released
the bits back into the world, something
foreign and useless, and I am
familiar with the effect, having
picked the itchy glass of a Nissan
from my own elbow as a child,
a full year after the Lincoln sped head-on
into our lane, and it isn’t very
different, or different at all,
from how I wake at 3:06 AM
every day though it’s been
over three years and his shadow
still rides the length of my body
as if it now belongs to me, how
my skin took in and grew over
his violence and now spits it back
out in small fragments each time
a man stands too close on the subway.
by Jeanann Verlee
how his body kept them, skin
grew over and eventually released
the bits back into the world, something
foreign and useless, and I am
familiar with the effect, having
picked the itchy glass of a Nissan
from my own elbow as a child,
a full year after the Lincoln sped head-on
into our lane, and it isn’t very
different, or different at all,
from how I wake at 3:06 AM
every day though it’s been
over three years and his shadow
still rides the length of my body
as if it now belongs to me, how
my skin took in and grew over
his violence and now spits it back
out in small fragments each time
a man stands too close on the subway.
by Jeanann Verlee
Jeanann Verlee is author of Racing Hummingbirds, recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in poetry, and Said the Manic to the Muse. She has been awarded the Third Coast Poetry Prize and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry and her work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Rattle, and failbetter, among others. Verlee wears polka dots and kisses Rottweilers. She believes in you. Learn more at jeanannverlee.com.
