> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://poetry101.love/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Anodyne
- URL: https://poetry101.love/anodyne/
- Published: 2021-01-15T03:13:45.000Z
- Updated: 2021-01-15T03:17:27.000Z
- Description: by Yusef Komunyakaa
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: Yusef Komunyakaa, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

I love how it swells  
into a temple where it is  
held prisoner, where the god  
of blame resides. I love  
slopes & peaks, the secret  
paths that make me selfish.  
I love my crooked feet  
shaped by vanity & work  
shoes made to outlast  
belief. The hardness  
coupling milk it can't  
fashion. I love the lips,  
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.  
The hair holding off rain  
& snow. The white moons  
on my fingernails. I love  
how everything begs  
blood into song & prayer  
inside an egg. A ghost  
hums through my bones  
like Pan's midnight flute  
shaping internal laws  
beside a troubled river.  
I love this body  
made to weather the storm  
in the brain, raised  
out of the deep smell  
of fish & water hyacinth,  
out of rapture & the first  
regret. I love my big hands.  
I love it clear down to the soft  
quick motor of each breath,  
the liver's ten kinds of desire  
& the kidney's lust for sugar.  
This skin, this sac of dung  
& joy, this spleen floating  
like a compass needle inside  
nighttime, always divining  
West Africa's dusty horizon.  
I love the birthmark  
posed like a fighting cock  
on my right shoulder blade.  
I love this body, this  
solo & ragtime jubilee  
behind the left nipple,  
because I know I was born  
to wear out at least  
one hundred angels.

Komunyakaa, Yusef. [Anodyne](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Anodyne/nQFjHAAACAAJ?hl=en&kptab=getbook&ref=poetry101.love). United States, Wesleyan University Press, 2002.