Eyes
the only parts of the body the same size at birth as they'll always be. "That's why all babies are beautiful," Thurber used to say as he grew blind -- not dark, he'd go on to explain, but floating in a pale light always, a kind of candlelit murk from a sourceless light.
He needed dark to see: for a while he drew on black paper with white pastel chalk but it grew worse.
Light bored into his eyes but where did it go?
Into a sea of phosphenes, along the wet fuse of some dead nerve, it hid everywhere and couldn't be found.
I've used up three guesses, all of them right.
It's like scuba diving, going down into the black cone-tip that dives farther than I can, though I dive closer all the time.
William Matthews
Other author posts
Mingus In Diaspora
You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out, like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon, or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost, who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus He would say, and he did, in one...
Dire Cure
First, do no harm, the Oath begins, but before she might enjoysuch balm, the docs had to harm her tumor It was large, rare, and so anomalousin its behavior that at first they mis-diagnosed it Your wife will die of ...
Poem The lump of coal my parents teased
The lump of coal my parents teasedI'd find in my Christmas stockingturned out each year to be an orange,for I was their sunshine Now I have one C gave me,a dense node of sleeping fire I keep it where I read and write
The Snake
A snake is the love of a thumb and forefinger Other times, an arm that has swallowed a bicep The air behind this one is like a knot in a child’s shoelace come undone while you were blinking It is bearing something away