Ghazalish, The Flood & Pain
by Jessamyn Smyth

Ghazalish, The Flood

Here is what I want you to know about the silence, still as death and colder: it moved from you to
me, see, here in this bonecage gone titanium, this immune system propped by goblin armies:

couplets emerge from scar, relentlessly enjambed. This body is a verse form dealing with both loss
and love, but choked by anaphylaxis there is no scheme. The poet’s moniker appears at the end.

Once I took you all the way in, once I choked. They are peculiar twins, vulnerability and memory: I
am made and remade as neural network linking like things, a synesthesia.

My red is joy, a blues song in my flesh. Did you know we remain aware under anesthetic? I hear the
stapler closing me back up: while he sank bone-screws, he talked about his sailboat. Afloat,

I know what is happening to the body I am in, in all this water. Sew me into the lining of your coat
and carry me away from here: my bones your corset, I will hold tight. Cubit by cubit I become ark

filled with wild animals. Surely there is a way to silence all this howling? Once I took it in; once I
could not stop it from spilling out. How the light slid over your cheekbone as certainty.

One mouth ungenerous, one sewn shut. Trace the philtrum, fingertip-rest: trace the hours of kissing.
You used to like it, so I reminded you. Even on my own lips now my name shatters.

Pain

It’s always in bed that bombs go off: dynamite lover, death, dynamite in broken bones. Once I
traced the line of your cheekbone while you slept: through my fingertip came mortal ticking. It’s like
kudzu, pain—an invasive species, climbing and twining. Have you ever been made of doom? I
dream of dance, neural precision: how once I kicked a man’s shirt open without touching him, how
his buttons fell like coins. Some things oxy can’t touch. Neither can you, I tell the skeleton. Don’t touch
me. It backs off. Later, I feel bad. Run my fingertip over its cheekbone.