Thalidomide

O half moon--
Half-brain, luminosity--
Negro, masked like a white,
Your dark
Amputations crawl and appall--
Spidery, unsafe.
What glove
What leatheriness
Has protected
Me from that shadow--
The indelible buds.
Knuckles at shoulder-blades, the
Faces that
Shove into being, dragging
The lopped
Blood-caul of absences.
All night I carpenter
A space for the thing I am given,
A love
Of two wet eyes and a screech.
White spit
Of indifference!
The dark fruits revolve and fall.
The glass cracks across,
The image
Flees and aborts like dropped mercury.