KAREN MANDELL

Bracelet Picked Up at a Yard Sale

Besides my two sets of Buddhist prayer beads
I’m wearing a tortoise shell bracelet on my right wrist.
I think it’s really tortoise. It’s not like the shiny
mottled brown plastic I’ve worn as glasses, barrettes,
since school days. This is a band half an inch wide
with the composition of thick toenails. The colors segue
from cream to pale green to bruised brown. It’s looking
very real. I picture my toenails, yellowish
now in the last days of winter, wrenched off to make
a brooch, overlapping petals bound by silver.
Doesn’t mean I take the bracelet off.
It’s big so I wear it on my rolled up shirtsleeve
instead of my skin. It doesn’t touch the prayer beads
carved of sandalwood. Maybe they just cut off
a limb to make the beads. Let the tree get off
with a warning. Wonder what they did with the rest of the turtle,
soup perhaps, or tossed on the slag heap of small bodies,
bent spoons, charred breath, the mountain beneath the mountain.

copyright KAREN MANDELL