Clare Rossini Cold Bone I have one cold bone
In my body, cantankerous
Bone that knows how easily the skin
Breaks and the heart is doused of its beating. Wise bone, crude bone, bone
Foreign to love and to the uprising
Of such as the tulips out my window, all at once
They’ve appeared, smacking of red and pink. When the fall announces all manner
Of grandiose departures, my bone of frost
Remains aloof.And at 3 a.m., when the news
Of war flounders into My tiny bedside radio, this sharp-toothed
Clavicle or humerus, shiftless radius or scapula, has the nerve—
The nerve!
To ever so lightly shine. Is this the fallout
Of the mess we made in Eden, golden ages ago?
Else why should the moon out my window tonight
Torch the neighbor’s lonely lilac
While beneath the very same moon, poker-faced
And brilliant as a strobe, the children of Baghdad are taken
By the bombs’ relentless flowering?? Tibia or femur, tiny jealous bone of the foot,
I’d wrap you if I could in my old green sweater,
The one that staves off the shivers that come
Even in the sour heat of July. You cherish your frost. Fend off feeling
What the children of Baghdad feel tonight, their old,
Old world breaking around them
Like a toy.
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