Mani Rao
POLPOT
Piece by piece clothes fell skin peeled and flesh ran in lumps and gravy
Her sidelong glance still tosses lazily on your hammock smile
Icecube swirling provocation in your glass
The bones are good to drum with
Tusk plucked and thrown like a gauntlet
Row of ivory pawns
Pillars in war of no ceiling
You relieve the palms of superfluous arms and use their sawtooth blades to slice our necks
Shells of infant heads you smash on trees
Oil stains trunks as tears of elephants
We play calm host to your furrowing worms
Rats tentative in our gullies
Radio flies
When you tap for one last formal dance we show up in crossbone bowties
Jiggling our hips we make the ratatat.tat of castanets
Your raised leg swings the ball of your foot bounces tilting the earth the heel falls correcting the tilt
Chandeliers heave
Marbles Rrrrrr
Our skulls your lost beachballs
Somedaysome snake our scarf or rag will loop through our sockets to polish us