There were 42 pieces of him I found;
a jigsaw of flesh to solve
piece into piece, or a crazyquilt
trimmed and stitched exactly
into his pattern.
It takes audacity to reassemble a god
from what’s dead, and the assurance
only goddesses can own, to lean so heavy
on the trust that I recovered
the singular fragment of his heart
that held memory in one fiber;
our love, electric and driving,
now cold and dry under linen,
our last forensic secret,
Waiting for hope to animate it again.
Susan Daniels Poetry 
Who’s playing Osiris? Nice Job.>KB
Thanks. I am afraid in this instance I might have been Set.
“our last forensic secret”, best line bar none. Honestly Susan I know you are referencing something here, but I don’t really know what it is. I like the mystery, but I do feel a trite dumb (I’m not necessarily saying that I’m not by the way). That makes me want to research a bit, so I will. Nicely done, that second last line is high tide.
Thank you, Trent. I am playing with the Isis/Osiris myth here. After his murder by his brother Set, Isis searched all over egypt for the pieces of his body, so she could reanimate her lover. I would never call you trite, or dumb… Just not a grade school mythology freak, like I was 😉
No worries. School didn’t treat me well, so I axed the statue out front. You got me thinking, anyway, and I do appreciate that. I have vague recollections of the myth, but most are submerged under the healthy draughts of… whatever happens to be nearby actually.
Hee, hee. I love that about you, Trent–your statue axing is still going strong. Makes for wonderful writing.
This is superb, such a moving, human but still godlike rendering of the Isis myth, bravo!! 🙂
Thank you, H. Had to do it!
Glad you did!! 🙂
and from his pieces she begot horus – or something like that
Yep. So she must have done something right.
A jigsaw of flesh. Sounds messy, although I’ll bet Hannibal Lecter is licking his lips right now.
Yum. Or in my case, yuck…
It takes audacity to reassemble a god
from what’s dead, and the assurance
only goddesses can own
Powerful!
Ah, thank you, Georgia. Love demands audacity at times, and then again, sometimes it demands what I wrote today 😉
A splendid write, Susan.
Thank you, C!
Love, love, love this creepy, creepy, creepy poem. I especially enjoy how it pivots on hope at the end to resurrect the dead. Good one. Susan.
“our last forensic secret
Waiting for hope to animate it again.” These lines were in my email box but not in your final copy. I would advocate (hope) for their return. 🙂
Oh, if you think they add anything, I will add that last line back again. I thought it was bogging it down 😉
Interesting, all these poems of chopping up what’s loved. At least in this one, the lover gets put back together again…Thanks for the wonderful comment, Alice!
It didn’t bog it at all. But it could be the way my mind works. I’m a follower of the foibles of “Hope”.
Yes. A lot of chopping into bits. Perhaps I should see if I can crank up American television from here. 😉 Yikes.
I also cracked up at an ad for surgical fat reduction that popped up at the tail end of your poem the first time I clicked on it. My husband had my ad-blocker turned off and didn’t tell me. Talk about chopping to bits. 🙂
Ewww–perfect ad for that one! Yes–we were watching a “Deadly Women” marathon on one of the Discovery Channel clones. I am ashamed to admit that it meshed well with my mindset this week 😉
Yay? “Deadly women” marathon? Wow. Good fertile poetry soil. 😉
Thanks, Alice! Crazy, blood-colored, disturbingly fertile soil, indeed 😉
Disturbingly. Indeed. 🙂
Good soil for roses.;-)
Knocked me over this one – sheer beauty. “It takes audacity to reassemble a god”
Incidentally, 42 is 7 (perfection) in 6 places!
Thanks so much, Noel! Ah, leave it to those Egyptians to have a message coded into the numbers of so many of their myths 😉