The leg of a table,
the spine of a book,
the eye of a needle:
One of these
should be sufficient
to scrape a petroglyph
into a patch of skin
or etch a wound
into the landscape;
eloquence and cruelty
with a tooth pulled
from a cliché,
incidental but deep
enough that centuries
from now someone
will happen upon it
and say, here,
we touched bone.
copyright 2004 Rocco de Giacomo
As appeared in Quills, Vol. 11 No. 11, 2005,
and the chapbook collection Leaning into the Mountain,
Fooliar Press, 2006.