Injury Syllabic Poetry
--
cut my ring finger
cut my ring finger
with the potato peeler,
where when you need one
is a holistic healer?
all the simplest tasks
are now taking forever,
making my dinner
an arduous endeavor
took out a big chunk
of this bejeweled digit,
bandaged it up but
ouch! still hurts when I touch it
not looking forward
to washing my hair tonight,
if I just comb it
perhaps it’ll be alright
guess I will retreat
to my poetic heaven,
stacking syllables …
see? five-seven-five-seven
cut my big toe
cut my big toe while
filing my nails —
let me serve up the
gory details
self-care can be a
risky affair —
one reason I don’t
cut my own hair
but doing my nails?
(I pre-supposed)
I could accomplish
with my eyes closed
lay in my terrace
reclining chair —
breathed in the fragrant
late summer air
carefully sanded
every digit —
didn’t get ticklish
didn’t fidget
all of a sudden
my finger slipped —
and the filer’s sharp
pointy end dipped
below my big toe
where nail meets skin —
found a weak spot and
dug deep within
not sure what came first
the blood, the pain —
heard myself yelling:
“f#ck! not again!”
good thing I had red
polish on hand —
covered the crime scene
well, in the end
crafting this ditty
was a fun chore —
syl’ble count, this time:
five four five four
full disclosure, these poems were written several years ago, and several months apart, I wanted to present them back to back, paired with an OpenAI-generated image depicting bodily injury, rendered in the algorithm’s best approximation of Austrian secessionist painter Gustav Klimt
