Sara DiMaggio

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Catalogue (attempting elegy)

..................................................................................................My fellow citizens,
The foot is the shoe is the mouth is the hand no
is the toe. We cover the unseen, the unseeable.
Placed in the ground now everywhere
..................................................................................................at this hour,
a finger touches a new body grows.
Pieces must be buried so that a village may grow.
I have been told. I cut off
..................................................................................................American and coalition forces
what I do not need, plant it in the ground.
This is how to save a life, I explain, gesturing
to my removed parts. In the spring yellow ribbons
..................................................................................................are in the early stages
fall from our hair, tie new leaves to the trees.
If strings were released the structure would fall.
The structure, the sky. I water my limbs
..................................................................................................of military operations
but nothing grows. Hush, I say.
Lay against the time.
The border is a problem and so
..................................................................................................to disarm Iraq
we throw bodies at the skin part by part.
To show our devotion we build
a river of snow no a river of feet
..................................................................................................to free its people
no more a river of hands a river of teeth.
Each tooth is an eagle each tooth is a fish.
Swim up stream around streams. One tooth falls
..................................................................................................and to defend
from the river and continues to grow.
We cut a door inside it, live
in this enameled cave. We fit inside the way
..................................................................................................the world from
a tooth fits in a mouth. No.
The way a mouth fits in a fire. Against,
and because of

..................................................................................................grave danger.






Bio:

Sara DiMaggio currently resides in the Bronx, where she is a
teacher of middle school writing. She holds an MFA in poetry from the
University of Michigan, where she received the 2008 Moveen Fellowship.





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