Ashley Leslyn Wood

Whose are the bodies

and from what quarry

do they come?

In what space do they

sit

stand

squat

fart

fall

      down?

When are they still -

water no longer the waves

that fall apart like moths do,

    to dust?

When are they shelved?

What parts are collected to sit

with porcelain things

slender white things

or bronzed

metallic bodies.

Whose bodies lift rocks?

Make walls?

Or swim for the thrill?

Swim for an escape

under the tightrope wire?

Whose bodies burn wood?

Burn to make smoke to clear out

the body?

Whose cinge lashes

burning blunts on sea walls?

Whose body will find them out,

find their bodies to

be made of ash?

    Not rock. 

    Not stone.

Whose bodies get

carved out, hollowed out

on the way to buy eggs

and bread?

The chiseled eyes 

of milk drinkers

cut away at the cloth 

that covers them.

Naked, bodies so easily

chapped by the salt breeze.

Salt, too, is a rock that dissolves,

mined for

              by fragrant bodies.