Bodkin
by Vona Groarke
Bodkin - Vona Groarke
Bodkin
A word from a dream, or several, spiked on it
like old receipts. Something akin to a clavicle’s
bold airs; a measurement of antique land;
a keepsake brooch on a quilted silk bodice;
a firkin, filled to the brink with mead or milk;
a bobbin spinning like a back-road drunken bumpkin;
borrowed, half-baked prophecies in a foreign tongue;
a debunked uncle’s thin bloodline; a Balkan
fairy story, all broken bones poked inside out;
a bespoke book blacked in with Indian ink;
a bobolink in a buckeye or a bare-backed oak;
a barren spindle, choked ankle-high with lichen;
a fistful of ball bearings dropped on a bodhran.
Body skin. Kith and kin. Other buckled things.
from Spindthrift (Gallery Press, 2009), © Vona Groarke 2009, used by permission of the author and the publisher.