after a line of Stallings

What started as hers has now become his,
stolen from burnished sands of the past like
all the lost poems wrapped around corpses,

forgotten in fragments he mimics in these
stuttering verses where white spaces show breaks.
What started as “hers” has now become “his”

slipped in innocently (or not) by a scribe’s miss,
the original line unsung in a tomb, black
with other lost poems wrapped around corpses.

The cuts on her skin speak of iron’s sharp kiss
like vellum now scarred by metal and ink.
What started as hers has now become his

excuse for impeding all progress.
He’s combing through history’s waves in the wrack
to find her lost poems wrapped around corpses

as if only her words could undo all this
as if one translation could bring her life back.
What started as hers has now become his,
lost in the poems we wrapped around corpses.

– G.M. Palmer