Contributor Series 7: The Confessional Diary of Bone
Boneing
By Hugh Fox
A week of urine blood, my urologist-oncologist
gives me three different kinds of antibiotics
that collectively turn my nights into Andean
hallucinogenic-mares, last night they were all
there, at first unidentifiable skeletons sitting
around the dining room table chawing on bird
and snake bones, "Our favorites," one old, squat,
thick-bone explains, "You'll find out," trying to figure
out who it/(she?) is, slowly beginning to recognize
them all, old Czech-Jew grandma, and there's tall
MD professional Dad and delicate as sparrow-bones
Mom, Brother Jim, killed in Korea, still all avid and
intense, even with the bones, and wife number 1,
Aviva, killed in an Andean rock-slide at Tiawanaku
when we were on one of our trips looking for God,
the others slowly coming back into recognizableness,
Mr. San Francisco Richard Morris, writing a poem
between bone-bites ... looking at my own hand as
I reach down for a delicacy bone, Richard reading
my bone-brain, "Don't worry it won't be long before
you recognize us all ... including the ones ... "
which I fill in/complete "yet to arrive."
Hugh's most recent poem to appear at vox poetica was Words, published in September as part of Contributor Series 6: A Currency of Words.
Wow! I found this fascinating.
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This is an eloquent poem about mortality, that one trait we all share, and the bones of memory upon which our dearest relationships hang.
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Spooky.
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