Stop, sir. Which way is home? 
January of the body. Its hinges hum like tired gates. 
On another shore people die. 
I am sick of being brave. 

You drive me to the diner, 
the one that serves pressure-cooked stews 
of oxygen. 
It’s a stuffy room, 
the place of the blood. 
I redden, 
bloom 
with its disease. 

We cut each other off like scissors, 
singular and plural. 
In solitude we form a pair. Touch me 
and I’ll enter your touch. 
Persuade me no one’s alone. 

I’ll wait forever for you on the lawn ...
where years trip over their own feet 
and the sun sets before it rises. 

My birth and death hang from the wrist, 
twin barcodes, 
blood like corsages 
to burn. 

I always loved the number line, 
but must it possess me before my grandmothers’ names? 

I see them not in their silk kerchiefs 
and headstones but in stopped seas, 
going on about figurines, my mom’s smile 
and how death enters us at first as a dream 
to bless me, disheveled brain, womb and wishbone. 

Bio: Elly Katz