Poem from 1990s

I wonder if my heart is scarred

To the size of a man's

Wired inside the ribs,

A brittle net of bones

Stretched in my boyish chest-

Beneath the vestigial flame of nipples.

What is the body

But a register of its own pain? The Body

conscious of the body, burns

like a network of stars on the skin.

What the mind gathers

from flesh and bone

is but the record of the body

and its grinding mnemonic.