A remarkable life in poetry across four decades unfolds in the pages of Cynthia Zarin’s Next Day: New and Selected Poems. Here’s her “Bruise,” from about midway through the journey.
Bruise
Black bruise an inch below my knee; white bone, my kneecap wrenched askew;
knee a blind eye, bruise a shiner, the pair of them two goggle-eyes, bridged by
a shiny, half-moon scar. A battered aviatrix? She flies above a dream island.
At three, I fell from a knee-high curb. Mind yourself, I hear the voices say,
when decades later, in the bath, my knee, drowned face, knucklehead, rises
above the water table, volcano with its violet flame. Bedpost? Doorjamb?
The hours last week turned to glass? And if asked to swear to it, say
what’s to blame? The mind trolls, reels back, and begins, and begins
again to prove how if I’d only done that one thing— but there are so many.
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