Exposé
My skin is paper-thin, my body
flat as a map. Unfold me like another
kind of rare archive, and you will find only
a study of old documents: loose sheets
and old textbooks, minor musical scores
or unfinished sketchpads, aged tarot packs
and crisp little lettres de cachet. Also yellowed
tabloid clippings, post-it notes, pages and pages
of abandoned lists. I suggest that you press
what you can of this mess into second-hand
envelopes, and mail it all off to somebody else.
Some of this can be burned and scattered as ash,
or mixed into a paste to make a hundred little
papier-mâché fish. Or fold the other scraps into
origami ships and send them away downstream;
a little fleet unsuited for battle or exploration. Or
else I’m just one last miscellaneous file lost in the attic
of a country museum, more raw material for the wildest
whims of any historian: Memoirs of an Old Atlas.
Daughter of a Biography. Forgotten Field Notes,
The Secret Diary of Someone Else. So my skin
is paper-thin, my body is flat as a map: I’m only
the inventory of an anatomy, closely researched
and transcribed. Now take your red pen and revise.
