Weight of a wound

After Helen Mort


My weight is
three black labradors lazing

a mummy moon bear
or a black and white ostrich

it is five times less than
the hammering heart of a blue whale.

Three hundred and thirty clinking
British bronze pennies

a static stack of forty bricks and less than
two cubic feet of tamped concrete.

It would take over a million
helium filled inflatables to float

my feet off the ground
and what would that do to finite reserves?


***


Turn off all the MRIs,
just to give me a lift.

To soar above my city
and see sunset from the sky

while flying under a cloud
of metallic blue balloons.

One hundred and four million
maggots mooching in the streets

to debride my wounds
when I return to earth.

Gaynor Kane, from Belfast in Northern Ireland, had no idea that when she started a degree with the OU at forty it would be life changing.  It magically turned her into a writer and now she has a few collections of poetry published, all by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Recently, she has been a judge for The North Carolina Poetry Society and guest sub-editor for the inaugural issue of The Storms: A journal of prose, poetry and visual art. Her new chapbook, ‘Eight Types of Love’, was released in July. Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com