the body keeps thinking it will return
to its vigour, it will receive phone calls,
and run to the corner with pamphlets,
a headband and a leather-stringed jacket,
to spread the news

tomorrow then she'll buy a mirror,
hang it in the room where the woodcuts
hang, the manifestations of the poet
in Chinese opera, two warriors, one musician,
one six-armed spear-bearing tumbler,
pendant,
in paper, the inability to fall or for that matter
hang on to bone, to crushed, ear, to banked light, to ease



from Inventory by Dionne Brand (McClelland & Stewart, 2006)