Sylvia Plath

Thalidomide

O half moon—
 
Half-brain, luminosity—
Negro, masked like a white,
 
Your dark
Amputations crawl and appall—
 
Spidery, unsafe.
What glove
 
What leatheriness
Has protected
 
Me from that shadow—
The indelible buds.
 
Knuckles at shoulder-blades, the
Faces that
 
Shove into being, dragging
The lopped
 
Blood-caul of absences.
All night I carpenter
 
A space for the thing I am given,
A love
 
Of two wet eyes and a screech.
White spit
 
Of indifference!
The dark fruits revolve and fall.
 
The glass cracks across,
The image
 
Flees and aborts like dropped mercury.
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