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For The Bone Dressers                                            Red Rock Review, 2006

Like many before you, you were a child

released from the heavens by the bone-dressers.

Your mother, unable to murder you,

gave you a scrap of flour and make-do

before abandoning you

on the terrace doorstep of the foreign gods.

You mention this in the aftermath

of your mother’s death. You mention this

because your body is thinning to ash,

because your throat is a coal shaft

from which no marathon bird escapes.