THE ATROCITY
I am not comfortable
With all the babies in the trees.
Doll parts, it would be better to say.
Doll parts.
I am not comfortable
With all the doll parts in the trees.
There,
I’ve said it.
And you, fingering the toes,
Smearing the blush out of severed
Arms, scanning for where joint
Plugs into socket, socket into joint:
You are seeing the tenterhooks,
The wires, the fish hooks, hooks
Of wires, garrotes of clever gauge,
Staples and hook, hook, hook, all surgical
In filaments of deciduous arithmetic.
Astounding how plastic these days
Is made into a common art of flesh,
How a marble can be believed an eye,
How the fasteners seem immature bone.
All the brash synthetics have come home.
Move along. We will be out of the forest soon.
Ken Poyner has been or will be lurking in PANK, Corium, Blue Fifth Review, Eclectica, Fear of Monkeys, and about a dozen others of late. After 40 years of doing this, he kind of likes not quite knowing if it is going correctly. Last chapbook, in 1995, was Sciences, Social. He is thinking reluctantly, but with intrigue, about doing another.