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fall 2003 | The Culture Issue

Sin of Skin

Leanne Trapedo Sims

One
Flannery’s. 14th Street
They come to wrap their eyes

Onion peels around the dance

Of rain
They receive

1 & _ couple

A portly Goliath

Two

Wisconsin in a buick ford. On
a cowboy hat. Entrails
Of a pig roast.
They come to wrap their ears

Around her shins.

Three
F train to Manhattan. A boy
With whisper eyelet,            slit
Teeth says dad,

Read

           white
The New York Times

Four
E Train to Queens. A
Man, with muscles, boiled
Bones

Mix with mealy marrow

Suit stab
(eyeclot)

Five
A suburb. She’s snared in his
skin
When to leave?

Skin of Sin

Six
Vitello Tommato with plenty
Sinatra. 

                                        body bar
of blackened turnips

Seven
Suburb II. She delivers twins,
Heaps of imperfect flesh

She receives:

No-olive martini

Eight
Ellis Island. The grass widow
with a bitter lemon in a
Brunette suitcase

Wears bitter lemon in
                                 Sunflower

                                 kerchief