I was ten years old
when I saw the Venus de Milo
posing on clean gray tile.
Shutter clicks were going off
like car alarms.
And I was ashamed of her stone.
Of the air where her arms
were destined to be.
I wondered why she had no scars.
If she hated the eyes --
their rabid dogs, their
pigeon-dropping cloying orbs.
I wanted to give her my clothes.
Pass her a bottle of glue.

“She’s broken,” I said to my aunt.
“Why is she here -- in a place of respect?”
No answer emerged from her tongue.
I thought about my missing leg,
its carcass and its animal.
Later I would share her shape.
Duck cameras like a waiting knife
pressed to a throat of crumbling sand.
She must have taken a fall.
“Someday we’ll chat,” I said to her,
“over a meal of oysters and art
about the presence
of grit in the shell,
about the impotent rage.”

by Janet I. Buck

Tags: amputee Buck poetry

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If this were plain old age --
that ugly, stubborn customer
of all our whittled destinies --
perhaps I could sleep
after watching you struggle to walk.
No hands. No feet.
So cheerful as they bring you
legs of carbon, and plastic and screws.

Your elbows swing like hangers without shirts
in a trailer shaken by storm.
The vacant air, your silhouette
of avid sadness lingering
with cobwebs on the graying walls.

At twelve, you're far too young to memorize
how sunlight blisters verdant leaves,
how clouds deliver piercing hail --
way too young to wear mortality's sleeve
in empty pockets where fingers
should dangle and dream.

© Janet I. Buck
*First Published in Octavo

Tags: amputee, poem, Buck

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For almost two years,
my company’s been a heavy bathrobe
four sizes too big,
a heating pad, a blanket
to smother my useless leg.
My home was my hole.
In my mind, I straddled
the crater the best I could.
It was never enough
and teardrops washed the sun
until its fireball was cold.
All it took was artificial parts that fit.

Depression lifted like smoke
that meets a racing wind.
Finally, I’m back again –
the fish with a hook
unpinned from its mouth.
I’m not so jealous of hummingbird wings.
While pain remains,
it’s lukewarm water
I can swallow and drink.
It’s only July,
but the Grinch who stole Christmas
handed it back.

by Janet I. Buck
*First Published in Offcourse

Tags: poetry, essays, grief, hope

2 comments View Entry