August

this is the desert month--the
doctor's office closes, the woman
sits, eyes heavy-lidded, listens
to cricket-hum as flowers turn to
photographs, the leaves curling
away to reveal a limb, a
wink, the shyness of the cerebellum
rounding the corner to come
to a terrible conclusion, hard
won, peeling away the layers, the
seismic shift these actions make
noticed by none but herself, the
artichoke peeled to its center, the
wordplay and sentence structure
broken down, the bones diagrammed
so--here was her heart, her liver
fleshy-fat, here the coils of her
brain-pan, white like pickled fish
caught in a jar
and what remains, of her, in
this desert August?
some fond remembrance, perhaps,
some inkblots, a tear in a
dress of grey lace, a heel broken from a
black shoe, drowsing there in late
afternoon, framing the world
with ten fingers, hoping, still
for water from rock, bread
from the skies