Kelley White (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania): Three Image Poems

IMAGE: CRANIUM & DAHLIAS

the awful roots of the teeth exposed,
the worm tracks
of the sutures, the horrible
worms of the cranial vessels,
the awful absence
of the nose

oh eyes
what have you lost
in turning
to blossom?

IMAGE: DRIED SKELETON OF A CHILD
SHOWING VEINS & ARTERIES

It is the hook
imperfect, bent irregularly,
and the indignity
of the picture wire,
uneven, twisted, wound roughly
around itself, looping
like the veins
and arteries
we are supposed
to observe;

what we see is the mouth,
small, uptilted,
as if reaching for air, the empty
nostrils snapped back
in that same hunger,
cheeks starved,
the heavy red aorta
a keel
in the empty boat of the thorax,

the pelvis pulled open
like shoe leather,
and the arms stretched out, pulled wide
as if in welcome, as if to embrace,
as if in running surrender to whatever horror
brought her down

IMAGE: EIGHT FETAL SKELETONS

They shouldn’t be walking. Little faces, big heads,
so pleased to see us, sapling arms waving past
bowed ribs, chin up stitched toothless grin.
Small bones, big emptiness. As if
the eyes were forgotten
inside. What a company standing on their little toes.
Why stand them erect?
They should be wound
into the soft pouch of a womb,
not this wire up the back, this varnished
pedestal. They are too tall. Little darlings.
They shouldn’t be walking. They should curl
like any child. Like your child. Like my child.
Like an eagle in an egg, like a stone in the bed
of the sea, like a cotyledon folded
in a lima bean.