Cuts

The parer in my hand
pricks
orange leather skin,
scoring
the peel to infuse air
with citrus vapor,
slicing
cross sections
of segments
that weep
in pools
on the board.

Bile flares,
licking
my throat—
I recall your scars,
loathing
what held your hand,
cutting
deep your flesh.

My eyes juice,
drip
on orange discs;
fear grips
the core…

And music born
of pierced skin
sprays my ears,
the bracelet of scars
still
seeps

beautiful.

House Under Construction

We breathe pine
and new lumber,
shoes scuff
sawdust
on cold concrete,
divided
by rib-stud
and joist bones.

In skeletal gaps
you pause, framed,
like moments
pictured
on walls
soon opaque
and sound-proof,
as days
chamber space
from shared air,
and view.

The stretch ahead,
nailed with loss’s ache,
trims
into imagined shapes
like sinew on bones
knit
by hope’s thrill,
hammered in shadow.

We taste near sap
of fractured flora
felled,
smell the sulfured
soil of new
uprooting;
low air heavies,
dewing with decay…

From one far window
of this home
void
of history—
this house soon-to-be—
light’s arm embraces
beam and joint,
blinding frames
in bright,

binding its tent
over concrete, rib-stud,
humus and pine.

Joy E. S. Manning is a former neonatal ICU nurse who works as a volunteer at her local art and history museums in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find her on Instagram @joyesmanning or at The Hidden Place.