Meg Schoerke
March 2005

Stratigraphy


No scarp I raise
will stave off the days,
slake the wind's assault,
or temper a fault.

Come close; observe
the gifts I conserve
in beds half-hidden
by landslide midden:

A midriff sash
of volcanic ash
and shell sumps inlaid
with reed brocade.

History's cut bare
in what I can spare,
while grain by grain
I'm sieved through rain,

Unraveled on rifts
with my few, small gifts,
and stripped to be glossed,
my piecework lost.

From Anatomical Venus (Word Press 2004).