Proud Flesh

 

rock paper scissors 

Proud Flesh

 

And see how the flesh grows back

across the wound, with a great vehemence,

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There’s a name for it on horses,

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh.

 

                                    Jane Hirshfield                                 

 

Yesterday you read the Ocean

Vuong poem in your pacific

baritone  & though I don’t know

how to mark your voice in a line

up of voices or put you

where you should stand as

a complement to the soprano

the alto the deepening

or heightening degrees between

each all I can say is

you read each line without flaw

without rehearsal the words

were tendered to your eyes tended

to your lungs & throat & tongue to

the room where breakfast yolk  

was hardening on your chin & I resisted

the urge to reach & wipe it clean

the way I would have some

eighteen years ago

when you were a boy 

when my throat spoke

when it folded like a cloke

your birth

name

that's over 

now

the poem you read was

maybe about mothers

and sons though I’m willing

to admit I might be commending

that out of my wont or out

of my now shadowy

requisite to see

that word and then to hear that word

one more time just one more time

before the resonance itself

is winded clean and because it is not

written because it is simply sound

trying to sound

the vocal mark it makes

inside my ear is a plowshare 

raking a gully only a mother

(whose son's throat is drained

and dry of her 

milk) he cannot (because

he is 

dying) breathe her out fast

enough