Avia Tadmor, 2 poems

The winter sky shuts itself like an eyelid, forcing its seal on the ground. She will spend all night fixing whatever in her is still open. She will find the fluorocarbon fish line in the garage and, like her father the surgeon, soap her arms up to the elbows. As a child, exploring her lunchbox assortment, she was always precise. She liked the direct treatment of things. Tonight she’ll begin with the cut on her belly, force the large yarn needle through skin, its elasticity and thickness misleading, not skin anymore, but rice dough or river clay. Burn the edges of fish line together, watch the flame, the two plastic antennas squirming and shrinking at once. It’s like blinding a snail, she will think. Then, the place between her legs. Not the pain of the needle as the angst of looking directly into the dark, the irreversible gate between worlds like the one she herself had come through. She forces the needle through thick tufts of hair. The direct treatment of things. Next is her mouth, she must pout to allow stitching surface. The lips are smoother than the skin around. The eyelids are last, now shut like a doll’s over two glass eyes. She sees herself from inside, the inner face warm and red. A flashlight under the covers, the cantaloupe sun. She sees herself from the outside, the cow painted on the butcher’s wall, dotted line drawn in chalk marking her meaty parts. She thinks of the envelope of the body, growing clammy and pale then a faint shade of blue. She sees herself sealed and rising slowly like a hot air balloon. If she could speak through the stitches she thinks of saying, look you can’t touch me again I am whole.

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Twenty Notes for Ecosystem