Bone Lady

Erika E. Reid, BA

Current Author Address: Erika E. Reid, BA, 600 North McClurg Court, Apartment 704A, Chicago, IL 60611.

Do you all know how to sex a skeleton?

He wheeled out the metal rack, the bones swayed and jerked,

there were steel bolts between the ulna's olecranon and the humerus, the vertebrae,

he stood in the center of the room looking at us.

He was a little tired, his voice was a little hard and scratched like dry sticks

scraped for fire, he spoke a little too loud and even in his eyes

we saw ourselves forgetting, moving on, leaving him alone in the room with the bones,

he drew the pelvis forward to explain.

Some people laughed because he'd said “sex a skeleton,” and then

they had to laugh again, to show they knew their own indecency,

so that we might say foolery instead of idiocy;

everything is more and less than it seems.

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