She gave her leg on a platter,

what’s the matter?

Nothing else to offer.

 

Soul on the foot sole

callused from the fragments,

twigs crack before the toss into the fire.

Kindling, unkind.

Bones of Ouro Preto,

fog clings, smothers while it covers.

 

That leg that walks without

treading and treads without seeing.

The leg stamps out time

for you and me.

 

The earth and light about the feet

remain hidden, scrubbed away.

 

What cannot stay hidden harps about the day,

the rot of a warm, humid tumor.

Groans stringed into a pearl necklace

from a place that doesn’t matter.

 

Syrup spread on the road,

sweet slide. Late night runs for sugar,

spoon-fed.

 

Still the leg perches for macaws,

the ones in fashion.

 

But what does it matter?

 

Comes the infirmity that that made

the leg look like carpaccio

no one wanted to eat.

 

Suddenly, religion blinks

hence the stumble on St. Lucy,

the one holding the eye on a platter,

the glare of the unseen.

 

A curried leg for a cured leg,

a leg granted for a life taken.

Fair exchange

ex-voto.

 

Only deities have as much need

for a leg as a snake after the shedding.