Rose Mary Boehm - In a Straightjacket

Tunnels without air.
Droplets of night sweat
roll like mercury. Merge
with the brook

at the bottom of the iron
leg on a creaking bedstead.
The white iguana extends
his five long fingers and closes
his eyes. Feeling his way

along my thigh. The angel
with wooden wings claps
on the green mosquito net.
Turns back, aims its long beak
at me. Storks bring babies,
do they not?

The fevers came early this
year. Where are my arms?
The face that stares
through the almost
opaque window panes

is divided into small pixels.
Morning is nothing here
and the moon barge hangs
somewhere on that branch

grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
The iron grids promise permanence.






A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of TANGENTS, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews (online and print).