Ruins

A child, two sizes too small.

An improvised bomb on loan
from the city’s museum of modern art. 

A plagiarist on the street corner
tapping veins for the aftermarket haiku. 

A chamber maid removed from the chamber. 

A dream where a naked groomsman
asks for sour cream.

The bruised grape of a borrowed afternoon.

Another word for hard bread
thickening in the mud.

Stage Three

Stained and swollen on a slide, part of me
awaits the technician’s microscope. 

I am a blight upon the rust of man,
a ruddy cell growing magnanimous. 

A machine spits out my ratio—the cancer
bits, the bits that aren’t. A jukebox 

stutters to life, but every song is the sound
of my mother peeling carrots.

Photo by Jakub Pabis on Unsplash