What did I know then of the resurrection
through
metal?
All I saw was how fire had eaten the honey
of his flesh.
Up one leg and into a shoulder,
most of a cheek.
And yet he stood, cradled
the rack, eyes
wet, blistered with shock,
as the cage closed
and the cables snickered in.
I thought Michelangelo’s
Christ,
cool stone
(orderly at his elbow,
me carrying vials of blood
STAT
to C-Lab).
That seven story lift—last shaft of peacefulness
before the searing
sheeted in
and they’d peel
away his clothes, that fine webbing
of synthetic
and arm.
What howls rose then
beyond the heavy swinging doors
of the Burn Ward?
I walked by for weeks,
tried to see
the debridement,
the reverse burning,
water for
fire—the grafting—
the man partially lizard in that clean room.
The nurses’ bodies
through the Demerol
like raw angels
dabbing his burning half with a cotton ball
soaked in silver
until
he was chromed and barred.
A kind of xylophone whose primary song
was pain.
Cool stoke of the hammer:
new flesh (howl),
dream of wife’s body, island
he could sink his whole mouth onto,
healed (howl), risen
(howl again)—
time like an anvil—
somebody’s face (mine often)
pressed one side of a page-sized window
scratched by breath and hand.
DENNIS HINRICHSEN is the author of six books of poetry. His most recent are Rip-tooth, winner of the 2010 Tampa Poetry Prize, and Kurosawa’s Dog, winner of the 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize. He lives and teaches in Lansing, Michigan.
