This is how I build things.

In a new series of poems, I'm exploring the need we have as humans to construct: ideas, things, feelings. So, this is a product of that:

to build death

she took ten pounds of red clay
and slung it over her back,
put some on her head for good
measure

we think death is sharp
but she rounded the edges
of a soft metal
and took apart her concept of love,

allowed it to wallow for a while
like her body floating in open water,
ready for fish-nibbling

and taxidermy crossed her mind
numerous times
but she couldn't get the image
of glass eyes out of her head

so she ran naked in small circles
around her trampoline,
parts bouncing haphazardly

as if not actually attached to her body

then she began to understand the
construction of death:

like layers of her skin or guts
turned inside out and
upside down,
but not painful
only colorful and bright,
like the pink of a duodenum

and she drowned in yesterday
's bathwater, but it never got cold

and she lived in beautiful death
for the rest of her days.