CLOSER TO SPEECH

Footsteps, doors closing, and gunshots
Are closer to speech than sounds of the sort that —
Before police cars flared like sunspots —
Than what the woman must have retorted.

The briefest kind of sound: She'd given way
To some quick blood, and he had resorted
To what a gun permitted him to say —
A sharp report, as passersby reported.

KERF

So that the cut will not bind,
The saw is set;
The angle of the widened tines
Prolongs the whet.

The way antagonists align —
The imperturbable surface yet —
Shows nothing will be left behind
Of discontinuity or regret.

A sharpened blade hides signs that harshest
Rasps beneath its mirror grind —
Infinitesimal shards and karstness —
Out of sight, out of mind.

Smooth tooth,
Drawn saw,
Clean wound,
Bloodless law.