Carry On

by Conyer Clayton

A limb becomes
increasingly heavy
once you lop it off.
A spleen stuffed

into a suitcase will overstretch
the seams. The zipper catches.

A piece is
missing, left

somewhere, kicked
around on tile. Quiet
danger of a foreign body.
Quiet danger
in your own.

Once punctured always punctured.
A tube rolls its eyes in your chest.
Your body is an origami.
What a shock

how easily we unfold
and no one taught us
the pattern. The paper

blooms in my hands, bloody
and wetting and wetting and

ripped. What if, and
another expanding tear.
But how, and
a jagged laceration.