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.