Scar 26 — Blackbird Archive

← v19n2, Fall 2020

When a bone breaks, it could be worse.

You could go numb with shock and say, it could

be worse. You might shiver from the jaws

of life, your heart gone racing in the wild.

The rubied beacon on the hook and ladder,

the medical mask, you see them now as props

in a movie where every victim is you. You

feel their pain and know it as theirs alone.

The sudden announcement of your ligament

and spleen, it stupefies. Sobers. Binds.

When a body breaks, a stranger comes forward

from the theater dark. The movie ends,

life begins. A man leans his face to yours

to ask. How many fingers. What’s your name.

body mortality illness

Bruce Bond

Bruce Bond is the author of three forthcoming books: Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Press), which won the 17th Annual Elixir Book Prize, Frankenstein’s Children (Lost Horse Press), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions). He is the author of eighteen published books including Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017); Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997–2015 (Louisiana State University, 2017), which won the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award; Black Anthem (University of Tampa Press, 2016), which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry; Gold Bee (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), which won the Helen C. Smith and Crab Orchard Awards; and Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press, 2015). He is Regents Professor of English at University of North Texas.