a snake goes blind the last time it sheds skin, a body
refused. I’ve found my own senses dulled once freed of some body:

a cello’s strings bending out of tune. the first time I saw a praying
mantis was in a housing project courtyard, a ballet of bodies

& the perfume of poverty. my aunt accosting me, it’s illegal to kill
them: a mercy for predators she didn’t allow her own body.

a block from here, a boy had his life snatched on the wrong side
of midnight, chalk drawn to crown his cold body

in the same solemn curves as on a sign outside a sports bar: no gang
colors allowed. I watch from the curb, my heart an intruder in my body,

bleating its dirge: the ugly work of loneliness: blood trickles,
pools in my palms. my chest caves into the shape of a body.

before my exile, I sow my grief, give dead flowers back to the earth
but won’t accuse God of injustice. I know He loves every body—

don’t remind me. stripped & nameless in the Land of Nod, my skin
as thin as an insect’s wings: the only proof that I still live in this body.

Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Pushcart-nominated poet, organizer, and educator. He was named a finalist in Autumn House Press's 2020 Chapbook Contest and the 9th Annual Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, and was longlisted for the 2020 Palette Poetry Emerging Poet Prize. He has previously served as Assistant Director for Polyphony Lit's Summer Scholars Program, and currently runs Word is Bond, a reading series that benefits bail funds and mutual aid organizations, in conjunction with the Adroit Journal, where he also serves as a poetry reader and contributor. His work has appeared or will soon in Guernica, wildness, North American Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, THRUSH, Passages North, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Dilla.

Matt Bristol (Of the Earth VII, black and white negative) is a master’s candidate in the Food Systems Program at the University of Vermont. He recently self-published two narrative photographic essays while teaching in Colorado. He likes to hide his work in free libraries and bookstores.

This poem was originally published in Salt Hill 45.