Familiar Tissue
“My father is given to me and I dissect his body. I study him carefully.
You ask me where I learn anatomy?” – Stanislaw Szukalski
As every sinew, tendon, lies apart
I reflect that only, in these loving scrapes
will he be at all remembered, in the throes of art
where I will sew him up in wondrous shapes:
a sculpture of a pair of disembodied feet.
A sculpture of a knee. A bronze of splayed
flesh. After this nightmare, I find my dad complete
and undissectable, with an unsutured heart
and, in a sleepwalk, I cut up the sheet.
Sam Hickford lives in a church, although this doesn’t seem to be having any net effect on his holiness.