who would believe how violin-string
the ulna, how she held it—the stem

of a wine glass about to be filled    who
would believe he lived for others but died

for us, became a dangled fish,
necklace strung from a two-sided hook

in the room where they go about
their business of tutorial carving    who

would believe they could fall so in love
that they would bed themselves down among

the cartilage and dream of their own bodies
opened up into fields of grazing     that

this could be a comfort amid machines
a cure for feeling remanded    who will believe

professional resurrectionists vie over plots
of earth where the dead assemble    that sometimes

they hear them click their clavicles in the night
—party of bones     we’re awful busy trying to tell apart

one halfhearted form from another    their enthusiasm
from the tremors of death    but which of us can

resurrect voice from such choruses of cadaver

Listen:

Lonsinger-100.jpgdawn lonsinger is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Utah, and is the author of two chapbooks, the linoleum crop (Jeanne Duval Editions) and The Nested Object (Dancing Girl Press). Her poems have recently appeared in Colorado Review, New Orleans Review, Sycamore Review, Subtropics and Best New Poets 2010: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers. She, like most living organisms, has a thing for light.

Homepage photograph from the Wellcome Library, London

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