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wherein they critically break out with harsh Hairs on their Backs, which takes off the unquiet Symptoms of the Disease, and delivers them from Coughs and Convulsions
—Thomas Browne, 1690
It makes sense to me to taxonomize pain
by how you hear it. Some hurt
pushes out of the body cacophonously:
sounds of expulsion, like lungs
blowing out fluid, or a brain,
hot with throb, letting loose a moan
that carries some out on its back.
But it’s quiet as a night full of thieves
when the test comes back positive.
Another question of semiotics,
like how we trust raw footage
more than a painting—the reality of both
the light and the eyes squinting
to keep the light out. They caught it
on camera when the museum visitor
went berserk on a painting.
First, she clawed at it. Next,
she took off her clothes and rubbed
her body all over it, almost
as if she was trying to get inside
the wall-sized canvas. Reports indicate
she then peed on the floor,
staining the $30 million work.
I think of that splatter, the sputtering
sound it must have made as she left
a bright trace of herself,
when I find her mugshot online.
There’s a huge, gleaming diamond
tattooed on her throat. The pain
of the needle that worked over her
voicebox has fallen almost silent.