Anne Riesenberg

WOMAN POINTS HER FACE INTO THE WIND AND BEGINS TO RECKON HER WOUNDS

woman takes off
her face
discovers another
plucks her eyes
dismembers
her tongue
evacuates
her suddenly
sunstruck
throat

woman cracks
her shoulders
against a rock
her collarbone
a fitful bow
her sternum
an arrow
anxious for
flight

ribs empty
smooth
as the gloss
of an eye
viscera
adrift in
cavernous
night

orbiting her waist
five bloody
decades of
disheveled flesh
all she’s
yearned for
but has
been unable
to shape
her slick
entry below
crowded with
dust

thighs tight
as a vise
knees clanging
like hammers
shins
sharp as
a handful
of nails

she assembles
her bones
makes
herself
a pyre
in the
mourning
an ark