Koss
SHOULDER STORY
the mocked shoulder
different from the other shoulders
holder of shame, this soldiering shoulder
blame-the-victim-shoulder
you-brought-this-on-yourself-shoulder
your-head-is-a-bowling-ball-shoulder
your-shoulder’s-a-boat-shoulder
your-ass-matches-shoulder
touch-your-right-knee-shoulder
baggy-shirt-shoulder
a-body-tells-its-story-shoulder
heart cover, sloucher, defective shoulder
breast plate, horror armor, bug deflector
a shoulder no mother could love
shoulder full of electric shock
lightning-strikes-bridge-shoulder
tearing across traps and triceps
shoulder at war with neck
shoulder abandoning arm
pins-in-fingers-shoulder
give-me-some-drugs-shoulder
deformed shoulder meet Psoas, rubber labile
bitch band snapper of body halves, of mismatched limbs,
she calls you as she packs her suitcase
where does she think she’s going
with that odd body?
let the world
shame you for being different, you know
what you’re doing as you draw
a spiral so slowly across a life / a body
shoulder get older and furl into yourself
the universe arranges in spirals, so curl
up and return to your source while
your limbs quietly coil
your dear ammonite ears hear
your beginning sounds
from before everything went wrong
they say it happened in birth
you were dying before you arrived