Toti O’Brien

Neanderthal

When they asked her about the sex
life of skeletons, “contrary,” she said
“to common sense, is not in the skull.”

She recalled a tall silhouette propped
into wet sand, red cape tied to the collar
bone, flapping like a wing in the breeze.

She recalled her own cheek resting
on a femur, how bone sometimes felt
soft like algae, smooth like driftwood.

Just brief, intimate impressions. And
those fingers, in segments, plowing
her hair like meticulous combs.

Those ribs, clicking like underground
waterfalls trickling over granite
miniature cowbells on the loose.

“It’s not in the skull,” she said. Perhaps
in the sinuousness of stacked vertebrae.
In the cavity of joints, slowly eroded.

In the sharp, wide angles
designed by forlorn limbs
like leafless tree branches

needle eyes gaping between fibula
and tibia, ulna and radius
pelvis a round, quiet, empty nest.

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Toti O’Brien is the Italian accordionist with the Irish last name. Born in Rome, living in Los Angeles, she is an artist, musician and dancer. She is also the author of Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020), and An Alphabet of Birds (Moonrise Press, 2020).