Nick

Natania Rosenfeld

1475-85; obscurely akin to Old English gehnycned, wrinkled,
Old Norse
hnykla, to wrinkle

You nicked me
now give me back,
un-wrinkled.
In your pocket,
I became
a crone. Heart like
a sagging bag: you,
thief, like the doctor
who said I had
a hoary womb,
pierced it.

Senescent or not,
it still bled, a mystery
solved only with
a kind of arrow,
whose point
had me gasping

like Teresa with
her robes about her–
so many beautiful
folds! Each upon each
like layers of skin
one sloughs off
lifelong, flayed
by one’s own
thieving
disposition.

Natania Rosenfeld is author of a poetry collection, Wild Domestic, and a critical book, Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Her essays, poems and fiction have appeared in journals including APR, Raritan, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Southwest Review.
Originally published:
January 1, 2019

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