Lepidoctora

-for my mother

In glass house day

filled with bromeliads

and sliced bananas

you raised your arms

to a symphony of wings.

Bits of colored movement,

frenzied like holidays,

swirled a hurricane,

living confetti

conscious yet unknowable.

Could that collective,

conjuring and purposeful,

stitch your bones

back together

into unbreakable smoothness?

Could it knead out

through traditioned dancing

the scars on your spirit?

Is that the power

of multiplied species?

Can those shapes

that now bind your incision

spin their membrane

around you toward

your imagined new self?

Will your limping

broken legs disappear

with pride before

the unbound promise

of your emergence?

These are the papery

caresses that quell

the pain that will not

un-press, the whispers

of transformation.

---

Taylor Hagood is a writer currently living in south Florida whose publications include the biography/true crime, Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Music Legend, and fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in such journals as A-Minor Magazine, Cold Mountain Review, and The Rumpus.