Describe the body, if you wish to collect it.

Poetry | Eva H.D. | Issue 48

Jul 24, 2025

Casus Belli

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The nurses grumble in with saline sacks,
pinched metrics, needlepoint faces he prods
for a casus belli, turn bumptious backs
to his howls; ignored, he summons ghosts, gods,
stonewalls his living guests, flipflops and nods
yes to cocktails, cigarettes, private yachts
not proffered, flinches from a firing squad
of light, holds forth. Time-lapsed, lucid, he rots
apace, weeps; like an open sore, or apricots.

From his bed, oblong squares of gauze unfurl
like shitstained kites. He calls for grapes, thrusts,
deflects, his intellect a bloated pearl
lustrous with malice. Settled in its dust,
silted. His arms punctured vellum, unpuffed
sails, slack with promise. His surgeon he bests
with apt puns; he stymies nous, compels trust
and love from richer men who acquiesce 
to his tall truths, his eyes unspooled as mangled nests.

He says The sun has ice cold fangs and I 
can't. He says it's morning. E-mails he sends
come out all moonfaced yellow suns that cry,
leer, wear party hats. Chickenshit, false friends.
Favours crowd him. The neighbour boy who lends
sweat marked banknotes, students, cousins, paid nurse.
He types a row of question marks; and bends
forth from his lips a skein of English verse.
He claws the air. The unseen ship he hails – a hearse.

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-2:22

On the Subject II

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Describe the body, if you wish to collect
it. Say it could have been no other. 
Because it could have been and was 
instead someone five foot six, dimples 
tits Fernet, mom-patched jeans, ballcap
for all occasions, blackbirds on the house, 
scars finger-thick. Cleavage of skinned 
treebranch edging her throat, beau soleil. 
Semi-permanent shiner – because her Atlantic 
runoff baby greys rolled cloudward, mussel 
shell. Bouctouche River silt in her sass.
Fuck right off, tell me another one.
What else you need to know about this 
one of many women, a shovelful of carbon?
Friday night special, how now to distinguish
her, our molecule of molecules,
ragged shrine on a Dundas West stoop,
crossword puzzle waterlogged. Halfcut
the flowers tear themselves apart for free.
The bereavements die of rain and rain.
Because she read true crime and couldn’t sleep,
comics, jaundiced leaves of Portnoy’s Complaint.
The click of her claws on instagram’s 
carousel blur, trailing carnival of red.
Cheek chipmunked with chickenwing,
serious ink blooming on her cream 
like a neck-down haematoma. Incisor glinting
in the barlight. You’d remember that.
You’d recognise men’s handiwork all over 
her body. Remember the afterburn?
Dust of any other cinderella. Her shards. 
Gold tooth on a shop floor, lining
a lockdown pocket. Cunts. Judy said
you could also mention bowlegged
if you were so inclined. Her Chiac-flecked 
French, Rs that roll forever, skyline-bent – 
past the bend in river or road, past the horizon
of herself, why should a woman? 
Go on. Her Acadian laugh.
(Judy says A whisky in her name.) 

You miss her, don’t you?
As if that meant a thing.

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-6:18