The Blade Itself

Knives cut both bread
and throats,
                   savouring
butter's slick slide
no more,

                              no less,
      
than the coppersnake tang
            of life
departing hot.

Honed to slash two
            from one,
to make unwhole
what once was. Whetted

sharp as a parent’s slap,
                           or a callused hand

at 3am,
             slicing
between pink sheets.

First published in Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up The Knife, edited by Betsy Mars