Sharon Denmark

Metamorphosis

With this troublesome, incessant muscle called a heart I am,
in beats, between a blue whale and a hummingbird, or more precisely,
between a black bear in torpor and a mouse running
across the beige linoleum. With this column of vertebrae stacked
like dusty books no one has room for, I'm not sure
I could walk to the ocean from here, but this body
has never been, and I'd like to taste of salt again.
If I am to shrink, I'd like to go overboard
and become invisible, shuffle off the vertebrae, shuffle
off the heart, the stiff limbs, all, to be elements, molecules,
no more complicated than the salt that would keep me buoyant. 

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Sharon Denmark is an artist and writer from southern Virginia. Her visual and written work has appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Door=Jar, 3Elements and Floyd County Moonshine, among others.