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 Fence, The Colorado Review, Barrow Street, The Quarterly and other journals. She is a co-founder and chief librettist for Seattle Experimental Opera.