Scratch
Inspired by “Fever 103” – Sylvia Plath
Pure evil. What does it mean?
I itch like hell.
My mind is as dull as the triple
Bladed razor, old and rusty now,
Languishing on the shelf, incapable
Of cleaving clean
The writhing rash, the skin, the skin.
My cindered thighs.
The calomined smell.
Too hot to handle!
Love, love, the heat waves roll
From me like St. Helens’ ash. I might
Begin St. Vitus’ dance, the throbbing reel,
The flagellate strokes
Lash my flesh. I cannot rise,
But unbundle all my clothes,
Cursing Satan’s wrath.
My bath,
Ice water welcoming my bulk,
Accepts this ravished hulk,
Steam evaporating into air.
Devilish lobster!
Radiation, burning bright,
Could kill me in an hour.
Torching the bodies of heretics
Like Torquemada with kerosene.
The skin. The skin.
Darling, all night
I have been swaddling in hydrocortisone.
My sheets grow heavy as Old Nick’s kiss.
Three days. Three nights.
Water-basted, roasting chicken.
Water, water makes me kvetch.
I am too sore for anything involving touch.
My body
Hurts in ways known only to God. I am radium –
My head a flame
On Japanese paper, incendiary skin.
I am infinitely apprehensive.
Does not my heat astound you! And my light!
All by myself I am a branding iron
Glowing and glowing, flush on flesh.
I think I may ascend,
Expand to twice my size –
Sparks flying from my cattle prods, I
Am pure evil,
Child of God,
Attended by prednisone angels,
By Hannibal Lecter, by Nurse Ratched,
By whatever these red things mean!
Not You, nor her
Nor her, nor her
(dissolving crystals, old swathes)
To Paradise.
Scratch!
She Paints
She speaks in colours now.
She utters no disclaimers, herky jerking
through the forest, palette loaded up and primed,
working out the jungle jive, scaly sunburnt chin
of strangled prose and tattooed skin.
She paints the trees by paleful moonlight,
leaves of mauve, tendrils trailing down like braids,
twisted up like no one’s business,
wearing gnomy, gnarly shades of blue,
tangled up and tough as glue.
She floats beyond my stretchy fingers,
graspy green, flying on a hint of breeze,
somersaulting through the forest,
scratchy arms and bark-stained knees of brown,
jangled up and backing down.
She scatters colours mixed with raindrops,
purple spindles, flailing through a prism’s glass,
expurgating all her visions,
tattered, splattered toes of grassy white,
spangled up devoid of light.
She coils around the trees at midnight,
wracked and wraithed, remnants dripping to the ground,
wrenching out the cold earth tones,
bony shoulders round and grey,
mangled up and tossed away.
Bob McAfee is a retired software consultant who lives with his wife near Boston. He has written eight books of poetry, mostly on Love, Aging, and the Natural World. For the last several years he has hosted a Wednesday night Zoom poetry workshop.
His website, www.bobmcafee.com
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