Two Poems

definition towards a cripple’s lexicon
[ spiel ] : [ play/game/performance ]

on the one side : light       skinned

alive to my shadow     gallows : puppeting

sense : eclipsed the other

          blots    white : taints

silk : screened    skin : mine

on which projections needle : ‘i’ : in seeing

     worlds        apart : hurting : still

                    part of me       divides

the play : acting       surgically : cuts

the conceit : i am

   some thing

alive : maybe

***

an arm & a leg

stranger than strangers, i see
i’ve part of you (a leg),
you’ve part (an arm) of me. how
we share that question:
from birth,
mine; yours
birth or—more likely—amputee. im–
parting the whole: who you are,
what you’re worth. i am not
in pieces. like a puzzle,
wholly, a picture
kintsugi-cracked: gold veins
two cripples—blue, struggling
flames—licked together,
apart, smoking over coffee
in the rain. i see a body like mine
over-thinks itself. the other
close to me. my heart. what it costs.