Fred Johnston

Bone Scanning

Perhaps like Superman I will see through walls
now that I’ve tanked up on isotopes
lighting bruise-blue veins and sparking neon
from suspect bones

the camera, smoochy as a lover
will map out the secret places where
little bumpy evils lurk
jigsawing until I am like a find in a dig

and there it is, the whole of me in middle-age
nothing for a lover to caress
a Hallowe’en thing with the ugly quiet
of the dead. Give this clatter

of razor-white calcium a name
even as its anonymity claims its non-identity
a figure polished up from a mass grave
a chip in the skull where the bullet went in

not a movement or the image will blur
as if a spirit wrestled its way out of the frame
call it a soul, if you will, it won’t matter
I am my own atrocity, I know that now.

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