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It was enjoyable to read. Reminds me of early Poe...

Wow, thank you for your feedback and thank you so much for reading

This is a pretty horrifying poem. 

The whole stripping down of physical existence is brutally and graphically depicted, with the only hint of a cause being "the Hand of God" - which, like, whether you say that's an almighty deity or just poetic language for "fate", is horrifying 

And then you get into what's left and the image of "a pelvic bowl" containing your hopes and dreams and hrmm I'm confident there. And I'm no analyst nor that smart, but the tagline on this poem is a woman's name. So, making an ass out of me by making assumptions, I think the "hopes and dreams" might be a child and the "pelvic bowl" a womb.

Which makes this about a woman's body being wrecked by childbirth, or a woman's whole self being destroyed by being a mother? If so this is the Clive Barker Mother's Day card.

No this is great, fine work. Even if I got it alll wrong, it was a great read.

I am stripped, naked

not only to the landscape of puckered

belly buttons and peach nipples,

but deeper



Not to muscles or spider web fascia

but deeper, still


Here I stand

a cathedral of bones

my stained glass

flesh, filleted with a surgical finesse

piece, by meaty piece


The steady hand of God slices through

all I thought I knew

I'm left with a shattered surface

and calcium foundation,

mere essentials


Porous, pillared femurs

hollowed, cored orbits

and a pelvic bowl

to hold all my hopes and dreams

for safe keeping


- Alisa Hartley

Edit: FORMATTING

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/xm4ll6/home_working/ipnjoab/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=ios_app&amp;utm_name=iossmf&amp;context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/xlkia0/little_things/ipnjx7m/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=ios_app&amp;utm_name=iossmf&amp;context=3

Cathedral of Bones