Waking in the morning anxious about troubled dreams he couldn’t trace was not a happy experience for today’s poet, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc of Portland. Yet he “took paper in trade” for it, and the description he wrote became today’s fine poem.
Worry Bone
By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
Woke gnawing its remains. Air
the brackish tinge of depths I had
all night been swimming in. No bird
song from the vine-covered fence
my room looks out on – not even
the pigeons’ manic calls. I talked
myself down from the bed, a loft,
took paper in trade for the splintered
bone – human or animal
I don’t know. I’d picked it clean though,
chewed the joint, cracked one end,
sucked the marrow. Tell me,
Mind, why you ravaged this limb-part.
Tell me what its owner told you in the dark.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
