Quinn Rennerfeldt – Low Bones, Whittled One

 

Low Bones

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We nurse our cold-clean

stomachs, famished and

fastened shut by each

rum breath, silenced by our

lead heaven, needles slipped

up arms in a harem of horses.

We sleep, clinging to the elbows

of spring, shackled to the warmth

of doors.  Safety is any number

greater than one; each night together

we are wealthy. Home

is just gravity adjusting

our low bones,

bagged and ready to go.

–

—

 

Whittled One

–

My hands linger on the ripeness

of my body where you ripple

and sift. Again I wonder if

you will be too skinny to thrive, a throw-

back baby they tell me can’t live. What if

the harvest of my meat and meal

can produce little more than jellied

bone and a whining, whittled-away

thing? I feel you move like a stretch

or slow dance and want to believe

you are all healthy and brawn, the things

Darwin would write of with raw, respectful

fascination, a body threaded thick

with living genes. My home diagnosis is

I am suffering from a heart

that doesn’t yet know how to love you,

little fleecy thing alive

in the shell of an organ like an eyelid,

thin mystery within my skin.

–

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Quinn Rennerfeldt earned her degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder and currently lives in Denver with her daughter, husband, and ornery cat. She currently serves as a poetry co-editor for Blood Lotus. She was most recently published in Wazee Journal and has work forthcoming in Slipstream in 2014.

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