Biosentimentality

When the black Lab chewed off my nose

and hard palate, I’d passed

out from the pinot

noir and white

handful of Ambien. And when

I finally reached for my cigarettes, one slipped

from the hole

where my lips had vanished. He must’ve

been hungry. I must’ve been

unconscious on the bath mat

all week without waking. When the surgeons

sewed a dead woman’s nose, lips, and chin

to my skull, I didn’t ask

her name or where

she was from, but the papers

printed it: a middle-

aged suicide who’d hanged herself in her French

village just days

before the operation. And when I began

to regain the taste

of a tangerine’s meat, the whiff of menthol

from a stale pack, I could feel her

senses still pulsing. I repainted

my bathroom from a bucket

of French blue, hung a thrift-store

portrait of a cottage near the window. I got

strong men to tear

out the tub and replace it

with a claw-foot. I put

a provincial armoire in the corner. Once, I dropped

my robe to the carpet and caught myself

I had to stop

staring at my neck. When my right hand

moved to unhook

my rose gold chain, I felt myself

tug just once, and the skin

under my chin rippled. That’s when I tore

each swinging curtain

in the house from its rod, each loose

lace tie, I removed

every possible noose.