Issue 17 – Winter 2010 – Lara Candland

Lara Candland

 

cardiothoracic

i had become a financier 
when the spider crawled from my marrow:
thou art  a retrieveless larcener
i awoke to the adder’s firmest bliss
then his crumpled mien 
when i hastened to wash
repent
turn myself into a butterfly—
ananias

*

the surgeon dipped a tincture from his urn—
i licked it off his finger—
just fix me please

*

paper plane across the room
staple this claim to your chest:
flowers               planets              faces                 all fickle
but ananias hovers around his cenotaph
the adder slinks into the urn
the surgeon’s thread
a pungent soak of iodine
closes your chest up tight

 

 

Lara Candland‘s book of poems <Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree> is forthcoming from Blaze Vox in the Winter of 2010. Her work has appeared in FenceThe Colorado Review, Barrow StreetThe Quarterly and other journals.  She is a co-founder and chief librettist for Seattle Experimental Opera.

 

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