Boutris - 2 poems

 

Despy Boutris THIS MORNING,

I looked down at my hands

and watched a wound bloom


with blood. To compare 

this plasma to a flowering thing: 


amaryllis, orchid,

chrysanthemum. To memorize 


creases, freckles, the sight

of this knife finding its way


into flesh. All day, the breeze

burns my ears, eyes 

blurring as sunlight 

filters through oak, pain 


from skull to coccyx 

at that golden color, unbearable, 


the haze so beautiful 

it’s hard to believe it’s real.


Miles away, my mother organizes 

her top-drawer & finds a box


of my teeth. My mother

tells me love never lasts—


a dried-up river

with parched rocks. Nothing

left to drink. 


PATRIOTISM 

Your name still blossoms

                      on my lips 

                                like a bleed.

                      And I still imagine your scarred chest,

torn open           wide 

                       like a mouth

                                   in song, shrapnel finding

                       shelter in your ark 

            of ribs.           And your face, half-

eroded with blood, your eyes 

                       half-open at the painful

                                  split       

           of bones and gristle.

I still think of your mother         mourning your death,

                              your body resting in a trench, 

then a grave,

            and your anatomy:

                       your blueveins,          your body I knew

                                  from flank to foot, casting

                       a shadow on my sheets,

your skin, 

                       once warm 

                                  against mine, now pocked 

             with holes,         like a cut 

 of seacoral, 

                                  a honeycomb.


Despy Boutris's writing has been published or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, The Journal, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Houston, works as assistant poetry editor for Gulf Coast, and serves as editor-in-chief of The West Review