Knots by Courtney Bates-Hardy

POEM NAME: Knots AUTHOR NAME: Courtney Bates-Hardy POEM: What would it feel like to write all of the knots from my shoulders? To trace my pen from stem to sternum, to slip the nib into my skin and pare down to the poem? If I could peel my skull like an apple to the core, could I make parchment from my flesh? I would crack open the occipital bone for the pink of it, suck the meat from the bones, lie satisfied and spent and open like an egg. Instead, the metaphor is lost. I poke each knot with my pen. The ink dies on my skin, and the knots have tied up my fingers. END OF POEM. CREDITS: Copyright © Courtney Bates-Hardy Courtney Bates-Hardy is the author of House of Mystery (2016) and a chapbook titled Sea Foam (2013). Her poems have appeared in Room, This Magazine, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others. She lives in Regina with her husband and their cat.