Quick! Staunch the blood —
it flows, unbothered, unwilling
to seep back in. Surge through
the crevices of my fingers.
Roil! Lines etched on my skin
knitted into an illegible creed.
Why have you come this far
if you only wanted me to bleed?
My ears still hear. Listen:
murmurs of serenity
searching for an unbarred witness.
Fill the canals that connect
to my heart before I rupture,
before the din leaves me hollow,
left to be filled with dogma
they find so ravishing.
Mouth, I pray, you work.
Shall I beckon across the chasm,
or would the sound slowly falter,
merging with the current?
You gnaw on my words,
chewing until they entangle
with treachery. Please don’t cover my eyes;
let me look into yours
before I wane.
The Junction Journal 
I love the imagery in this poem. This blog post spoke to me because of the use of imagery, personification, and metaphor. The description of the blood flowing unwillingly and unbothered grabs us and puts us in your shoes as the blood seeps through your fingers. As the a reader we also feel ourselves watching, as you search, in vain, for someone who witnessed the preceding events occur.
The stanza that stands out to me the most in this poem is
“Mouth, I pray, you work.
Shall I beckon across the chasm,
or would the sound slowly falter,
merging with the current?”
I feel like this stanza is very important because it gives the reader the feeling of helplessness that the victim is feeling as they bleed out. The way that the stanza is constructed is to make the reader want more. The reader wants to know if the victim can eventually speak. It leaves the reader in anxious wait.
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I really enjoyed this poem, to me what stood out was how the poem feels like a cry for help, to be understood while others are twisting your words as if twisting a dagger into your heart, making it difficult to express your thoughts and emotions out loud truthfully with out being misinterpreted. The repetition of describing blood as well as the search for a witness really stood out the most to me, making me think about how isolated and trapped you can feel when someone or something is holding you back from speaking your truth and twisting your words and using it against you.
The part of the stanza that stood out the most to me was,
“You gnaw on my words,
chewing until they entangle
with treachery.”
This stood out to me the most as it makes me think of when someone takes your own words and intentionally twist and manipulate it to make it sound like something you would never say or mean, therefor making it treacherous. Phenomenal work, you clearly convey the person in the pomes troubles through the use of description and imagery as well as emotion, leaving the reader feeling worried and anxious, worried to be misunderstood/ misinterpreted and hoping someone understands what they mean.
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From start to finish, this poem forces you into an unnerving and visceral setting. The immediate sense of urgency from the first stanzas conveys a futile attempt to stop the bleeding, in which the title “Staunch” by definition means to stop the flow of fluid. The usage of this word could also show how the wound could be untreatable and sets the tone for impending death.
As the poem progresses the speaker fears of obscurity, losing their voice, followed up by the last stanza. The lines “You gnaw on my words,
chewing until they entangle” could represent something tormenting the speaker by twisting their words against them. In the final three lines show an acceptance to fate, and to look at the being at the end in their final moments.
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