Fraud

I am currently working on a poetry thesis as a senior at Albion College. The title of the manuscript is Espalier. The poem "Fraud" is the first piece of this manuscript.

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Fraud

We hurt each other and call it honesty.
— Margaret Atwood


At night, I slide beside my mother
who snores. I slice down her spine
each vertebrae a dot, an outline. I peal back
skin from her shoulder blades,
give her vestigial wings. I read there and record it
in my handwriting. I change words,
rearrange facts. I plagiarize. Sometimes,
I scrape the skin from her skull to see
if the tracks of dreams are fresh enough to hunt.
They’re stale.

At my grandmother’s, I find her scar on her chest
re-crack her cage. She is so whelmed with words
I cannot write it all. They crowd, sentences
over sentences, each declaration
blurs the next. I don’t find what I want.

Sometimes I seek strangers
at the hospital and while the patient naps
or fades into a drugged haze I undress their wounds.
My nose close enough to smell the rot
of infection my nostrils flare, inhale
the evacuation of bacteria. I never find my reflection.
While I copy I fictionalize; I change names
and circumstances. But they’ll find me out.
They will know I stole. I will cower
when they will strip me as others bring
fluorescent lights. They will eye every inch.
I will call it honesty and they will find
my skin clean of scars.