From the Bottom

“Burnished,” when applied to limbs, refers you to furniture, or wood at least, a hint the skin has been burned beyond the human, & then beyond. Necessary for the removal of skin from a burnished limb is an implement sharper rather than duller, wieldy & willing to dig without displacement. The scrape of flint on a burnished limb —if you say “arm” you must mean it— resembles, no doubt, a chisel (of iron?) that furls what’s before it, away. The point of whatever has been lost between the stasis of the burnished limb & its movement away from the rest of what you have identified as skin, the skin of a burnished limb, is to bring to bear the thought of bone & how it relates or, better, responds to its covering uncurling from it flake by flake & amassing, forceless, on the floor, the floor you will describe as cement or concrete, at least rug- and wood-less, the wood being the skin of the burnished limb, until the skin is just another piece of your household furniture.