Phlebotomy by Rage Hezekiah | Really System: Issue Four

Phlebotomy

Rage Hezekiah

The fruit of my inner elbow acquiesces the pin-prick,
surrenders in the latexed palm

of a stranger. Moat gates lift, reveal familiar piping—veins
resembling my mother's, that climbed the branches

of her wrinkled hand. I used to sit beside her on the couch,
and press my fingertips into tributaries

beneath her skin's vellum. I'd observe the resilience
plumping the tubes, giving way to delicate pressure.

Today, claret color fills the vials,
I give, knowing it was never mine.

Rage Hezekiah Rage is an MFA Candidate and writing instructor at Emerson College. She is a recent recipient of an Honorable Mention in the Hurston-Wright College Writer's Contest and her poems are forthcoming in The Aurorean and Fifth Wednesday. Her work has appeared in Nepantla, Insanity's Horse, Mixed Reader, Everyday Other Things, and was anthologized in Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out.

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