Organic Rejection
Farrah Sarafa

Two veins meet and pinch drops of thick liquid to another side,
and imagination, a reflective and refractive lens
      in the sunlight
helps to make a rainbow for me.

Which color? Red? Or a soothing orange on this blue Thursday night?

Like an army of pine-needles standing still
or like a porcupine rolling his head on heart
      he is not calling.

A roller-coaster of blood, an arrest of tears
shroud me like a dark flood, a breast of fears.

my desires cause waves to move in my ocean of saliva.
I tremble and shiver, stand and quiver
vertebrae discs knock against each other
and rattle like a thousand shards of glass in a closed garbage bag.

My heart makes no canopy to protect,
no breasts, to resurrect contentment
and joy
because the Phone Call—
the love, the care from a man is all that may make Kings
of plain boys and stings from pricks—
deep sculptures from toys
and lips that can kiss without a thousand licks.
The call is all that would cause the tears of a yesterday’s rain
to recollect into the eye of a pond,

I lament an absence of mercy.

Pinched nerves and intestinal confusion
cause me to bloat, gaseous profusion,

I savor the effusion of longing and regret.

I am protecting myself like glass does a pane
but contradiction shows her deceitful face like a trick candle
that never goes out: I am not insane.

I know he will not call,
for I am a woman with a deep foresight;
I am a woman who knows pain.