qarrtsiluni

by Jill Crammond Wickham

There is no further need for disguise.
Husband, we have been found out,
revealed for frauds,

stripped naked, bones hung out
like a shop-keep’s hopeful shingle.
We are the undead.

When we walk into a room—
nothing. Sinners, cross-
lovers, strangers, stare, pray,

witness the ripple of our beating hearts,
exposed muscles, raw truth:
together we are a dead man

and his mortician.
One breathing, one wax-faced.
No beat. No pulse. No life.

With this truth, freedom.
Free of flesh, bloody muscle,
husband, we may drop pieces

of ourselves where we walk now.
We are free. Let us step
from our graves, trip

the half-light fantastic—first date.
I don’t know whether to run
hand in moldy hand

in front of a car
or send the worms of my lips
down your throat.

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When she is not teaching young artists to paint blue horses (ala Franz Marc) Jill Crammond Wickham masquerades as your average poet/artist/mother in Upstate NY, funding her writing habit by running a children’s art studio. Her work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Naugatuck River Review, Weave, Wicked Alice and others (and sometimes in progress on her blog: jillypoet.wordpress.com). She is an editor for Ouroboros Review and a reviewer for Poets’ Quarterly.