I have lungs with the wingspan of a vulture, heart chambers tough as cactus fruit, my face a prosthetic.

I have veins of red thread, strings embedded in skin and strained taught from above as the sun lifts me like a puppet, limp-necked, head heavy as baked clay.

You lay me on operation tables under a red-hot sky, hollow as a Spanish doll, my face spread like the hawk-eyed wings of a moth, and I feel my skin pricked by yucca spines; a pale hide stretched over a calcified frame.

Alpaca fleece spun into black hairs and slipped through the eye of a petrified needle.

My arteries alive, writhing in alien limbs.

Tin foil man, cobra eyes, you say I am being poisoned by a placebo.



© Alexandra Wollinka