TO FLENSE
BY MATTHEW MINICUCCI
This part of you has a name:
integument. I prefer facsimile
of a smile; cut flesh that shows
the baleen’s bend. Whalebone, however thrown
about by open mouths, can mean
so many pieces. Such bleached variety
in the wind, where even the stones go blank, sleep,
struggle along breath that escapes
like steam to cold stream above
the deck. There it hangs, brief, in
wonder; pondering whether to drop, to die
in the sea—or keep silent, endure
on as if haar, or sea fret, or simple
stratus, unhinged, come to earth.
