Justin Wymer

Three Poems

FACE

In one language at least it sounds like “rooster.” And before seeing the day I see crescents swaying under, and someone’s face clear in them, a dense flush of pink, and then a wind again, it goes under. I fell in love with the taut skin of the café chain-smoker. He had a trimmed beard and was peeling an orange. The puncture in the air was unequivocal, left no nose untouched, and its purpose wasn’t me, and I was furious. I saw the face of a meadow, the hair made sense in its tended wildness, and was pleased.

In the painting of the anatomy theater, the figures are rendered so accurately you see every tendon in the next, in the necks, which parts of their faces are bunched, or blanched, at seeing the figure split open on the table before them. The coat rack of instruments hung with hammer and saw, tubes hanging from them like faded licorice. The face on the table is less distinct, preference given to the musculature of abdomen, waist, ankles. It’s like the feeling of your body when you wake weeping, the rest below the head inner-lit. I want you to know I no longer think of yours alone. There are other faces in attendance making silent laws.

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