The Body You’re Suited-up In

The night peels the sun like an orange,

swallows it wedge by wedge. Come dawn,
the sun will rise again for you, bronze

and blazing. You take this for granted,
and this and this and this. There were days
when seize the day worked, when uttering

the phrase was an epiphany mint
sweetening your tongue. Now you might
as well be saying seize the hammock.

And the skull you keep on a cluttered desk
wearing a toupee of dust, how it functions
more as a paperweight than a reminder

the body you’re suited-up in is a body
death is slowly unzipping. What you need
is another slogan, another memento mori

to replace that skull. May I suggest
an X-ray of your chest Scotch-taped
to the kitchen window, that every morning

you study closely your heart, caught
like a child’s balloon in the branches of ribs.
Ghost-pale, as if turning to dust. Which it will.

David Hernandez is the recipient of a 2011 NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry. This poem is from his recent collection, Hoodwinked, which won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and is now available from Sarabande Books.

*Photo courtesy of c-reel.