Bloodwork

Some guy, bleeding, just beaten

by hooded strangers on the late train,

asks some girl, Miss S, a witness, the same

question that lovers ask each other

turning from mirrors, away,

“How do I look?” & she, bystanding, replies

“Frankly, you’re in a bad way.”

She’d been thinking of the one,

long gone, who got away, the one

who’d taken himself from her

& those days when she’d turn,

adoring, to him. Amazing.

(That’s what he used to say.)

Thus S, on loss, ruminates.

You can see what she’s getting at,

can see where she’s heading.

Your eyes have got that same telling

ache & sanguine reverie. You too

have once walked in twos, linked

to another in the light rain….

But we all, now & then, walk alone,

especially in the city of men,

where most you meet are bled dry

& broken, or have cashed in

care for possession, where

the injured offer you their arms

so that you might help them better,

like failures, like lovers, where the aimless

fling curses like boomerangs through the air….

____________________________________________________



Sarah V. Schweig‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BOMB Magazine, Boston Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Columbia University, where her manuscript was recipient of the David Craig Austin Memorial Award. Her chapbook, S, is forthcoming through Dancing Girl Press. She grew up in Virginia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.