Cori A. Winrock

Anterior of a Razed Room

What corseting—: the room cinched in
as the wrecking drill bores down,


its metal threaded vertebrae spiraling
slow through our plaster


and horsehair insulation, the seven-layer
wallpapers caked over and over each


other—a city falling
asleep under another city and another.


Our furniture slides toward a center—


the drill in the parlor a bright needle,

the floorboard rays puckered & tufted.

 

I want a new coveting, a lament-for.

A simple unribboning


of song. At night my horror

vacui wills itself to filled.


In the morning I find my fingers

unringing themselves—.


From the backbone of our once spared

room, you dismiss my voice as nothing


but traffic or disconstruction. When I leave you


I will leave you more than enough
light, my handmirror and a sink, to shave by.


Cori A. Winrock
"Anterior of a Razed Room" first appeared in Black Warrior Review, Issue 37.2 (Winter 2011).