Carol Rubenstein, a Poem

POSSESSION

                                    Carol Rubenstein                                                                    

Auctioneer, let the bidding begin!  All this is up for grabs—get some—

as the sweet stuff dizzies and falls gorgeously away.                                                                                                                                                

Bone fragments, splintered bits?  We toothpick them, twice incised,

for dislodging choice morsels and for twirling gums to panting health.

Knuckled knobs of bone ends?  Crack, suck out the sumptuous

marrow lode, next whistle it dry to summon up the double-headed dogs.

This stretch of skin?  Melting lids and lips?  Buyer, what’s to beware?

Crackle-roast it:  Rake.  A savor to the nostrils

rises, a rendering of fat as famished flames leap to lick and catch

each offering.  Sing the high-pitched song of the spitted turning swan.

The Three Ravens ask, with-a-down: “Where shall we our breakfast take?”

Then beak their punctual eyeball prizes.  And refrain goes down-a-down.

Flung, the marbled brains clack broken into shards of silence:  Such  

taken by law as assent.  To any queries as to reasons, answer you none.  

The jewels of vital organs spill lustrous through fingers—slip, soon

festooning the nude bowl of belly.  But wait, there’s an offal lot more—”offal,”

get it?  Ya gotta love it—all let drip within the feathered pubes!  This portrait,

“warts and all”, is matchless, of provenance unthinkable.  See the agent’s

deaf-and-dumb signals to snap up these bargains!  Prick, pop, shrivel, shred,

pouch to ash, sucked under the grate:  Just forget these assets?  Not on your life!

Note the going rate, all items tagged, look you take not one bite less.  Sold

for a song!  Lifetime guarantee.  Nothing known that cannot be possessed!

And repossessed—sold again, a whinny, a cackle!  Buyer, peering closer, reels

at issuing reek.  Now see in the beholder eye such beauty hollowing, pitted.

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Carol Rubenstein is a graduate of Bennington College and Johns Hopkins University, and has been a choreographer and a dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York, and a member of the Saint Marks Poetry Series. She has received numerous grants and fellowships including the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Columbia University and the Saltonstall Foundation. Rubenstein has also had many residencies such as the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay, and Ragdale, in the USA, and Karoli in France and Bellagio in Italy. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Books of her poetry have been published by Ohio University Press, Graham Bash, Singapore, Tynron Press, Scotland and Unbound press. The poet currently lives in Ithaca, NY. 

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