Forty Ways of Looking at Skin The skin is breath made Visible-- frost on windows, Steam from a kettle Skin's the black silk hat Out of which all those rabbits Insist on jumping Skin's a flag which carves The air to its own shape with Invisible knives Skin's a wooden sheath On a butcher block table Holder of long knives Saying nothing, skin Protests its own innocence Skin's in a line up Skin is waxed paper, Orange rinds, plastic bottles. Skin makes me queasy Skin is the busted Refrigerator in which Shroedinger's cat's trapped Skin's a fur coat wrapped Around a naked model, Call girl, prostitute Skin's a church, skin's a Steeple-- Open it up and See all the people The skin's a blanket Pairs of sweaty teenagers Grapple under it Skin's a circle of Boulders guarding the entrance To an empty tomb Skin's the wide water Across which every lover Has to learn to walk Skin's an octopus Eight tentacles wrapped around A beady-eyed mouse The skin's the box in The kitchen where our tomcat Bites ice off his paws The skin is a boy With his finger in a whole Apres moi, who knows? The skin committed A crime in Eden and now It's covering up Every organ has A totem beast. The skin's is A rhinoceros Skin's not committed To violence-- it just drives The getaway car Skin's the cellophane Box in which prom roses are Sometimes delivered Skin is a world map Tacked up on a classroom wall Dotted with pushpins Skin is the dropcloth Spread over a hardwood floor Lavishly splattered Skin is a stocking Hung by the chimney, full of Mechanical toys Skin's a lunchbox with Grapes, a bologna sandwich, A leaky thermos Skin is the brown stuff Onions leave behind before Anybody's crying The skin's a desert Ozymandias' column A piece of white chalk Skin's a bag full of Bones with which inveterate Gamblers come to grips The skin's a highway Impulses travel on it-- Disheveled gypsies Skin's the sea surface Things lurk in its salty depths Too fierce to mention The skin's a suitcase Sprung open in a motel Tumbling underwear The skin's a blackboard The math teacher is strict but Uses colored chalk Skin is the small bed Where a child lies, unable To sleep or call out Skin's a barbed wire weave >From which black birds consider Concentration camps Skin's a bathtub In which a man lies, singing Half-remembered songs Skin's a bird feeder With holes in which you put seed Or from which seed comes Skin is picture glass Hands over mouths, the thin ice On which skaters skate The skin's a penny Seen by a schoolgirl with her Nose to the gutter The skin's a piece of Paper mailed before Christmas-- A list of scrawled wants Skin's an Arctic Snowfield-- miles of white around An imagined stick Skin's an envelope Of old letters, bills, rough drafts, Notes for a lecture The skin's a blackboard Covered with old formulas And new equations Skin on old people Is the Big Top just after Dumbo pulled it down Skin is a slipcover A vacationing housewife Put on the furniture Skin's a great white whale The one into which Jonah Swam like a minnow Skin's a glass bottle Inside, there's a small blue sea A matchstick schooner Skin is a snake of Blank paper which keeps hissing: "SKINISSKINISSKIN" Skin's the wall in front Of which conspirators are Taken out and shot My skin's a boundary With established checkpoints. Yours Is a D.M.Z. Skin's the coveralls Worn by a strawman standing In an August field Skin is what creeps down Your fingernails: determined Moss over a grave Lyn Coffin |