II., Patrick Braley

i write poetry like splinters.
splinters of wood, of pine of oak of spruce sleeping.
long ones, deep and fat slivers
burrowed stubborn and warm beneath the skin of my thumb
sitting on their hands and shaking their heads
with the urgent fear of sunlight and air–
but i can coax them out. i can whisper
to them like lovers with roommates
and they’ll peek up
like snails when you sing to them and
i poke and prod them with my jack-knife and my tweezers,
my ballpoint pens and my pads of paper
and they bleed always but sometimes
like pomegranates stuck with forks but
as they emerge from the pink horizon
of my forearm I will pluck them
and save them in between the pages of books,
splinters or poems or flowers
opening against the cool face of white paper.