IN EVERY OVAL A FACE
When you drew lines in the sand with your long white cane
the lesson was that faces can be found just about anywhere.
All they need is a frame. And there it was, just needed you
to accentuate the slanted brows with a deft gouge, the skin
tone there, around two slivers of razor shells, which served
as eyes, the nostrils you jabbed with your tip, and a mouth
(a smirk you said) that seemed quite devilish. ‘Is it creepy?’
you asked. To you, this was beach braille, your runes. (But
now perhaps subterfuge, as you trotted off into the holes
left by horseshoes, in the days after your waist was stapled
shut, to seal the missing tissue, the shape of a closed eyelid.)
Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight of Her (Eyewear), which was nominated for the John Pollard Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland, The North, Gutter, Poetry Salzburg, Agenda, and London Magazine.