The flesh dreams toward permanence,

and so this red carp noses from the inked dusk
of a young man's forearm as he tilts

the droning burren of his trade toward
the blank page of my dear one's bicep

—a scene framed, from where I watch,
in an arched mirror, a niche of mercuried glass

the shape of those prosceniums in which still lifes
reside, in cool museum rooms: tulips and medlars,

oysters and snails and flies on permanently
perishing fruit: vanitas. All is vanitas,

for these two arms—one figured, one just beginning
to be traced with the outline of a heart—

are surrounded by a cabinet of curiosities,
the tattooist's reflected shelves of skulls

—horses, pigs?—and photos of lobes and nipples
shocked into style. Trappings of evil

unlikely to convince: the shop's called 666,
a casket and a pitbull occupy the vestibule,