Frozen to a position
more pleasing, I am

at last a specimen
to your liking, mount

made still, silent
and shellacked to shine,

woven with wire
to shape your desire

onto what is no longer
living, though you’ve bound

me down, hollowed
heart and liver, tangled

arteries and mellow
fat left to harden

on the table, blade
abandoned for thread

to stitch around emptiness
and how I howl

mouth stretched wide
like wound and the want

of your reflection
in my vacant glass eyes.

 

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (Ohio State University Press), and three poetry chapbooks. She is an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University.