by Ashley-Elizabeth Best

All bodies are gusted differently.

The triage room is meant for

the hungering viperous fuse of

numbering:

Heart rate

Blood pressure

Pain scale

Body retreated into husked gestures.

What number are you at?

Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg, ON, Canada. She has been published in Stuart Ross’s anthology 529, by Carolyn Smart in Lake Effect Five, The Changing Image, and The Antigonish Review’s Poet Grow-Op. Recently she received an honourable mention at the Dorothy Shoemaker Literary Awards in Kitchener, and was on the poetry shortlist for the 2011 Matrix Litpop Awards. She has a short story forthcoming with the Housefire Publishing and poetry forthcoming in the Red River Review, In/Words, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Prick of the Spindle, Tampa Review, Fox Chase Review and Branch Magazine. She blogs for Kingston’s Writerfest. Currently she is completing her BaH in History and English at Queen’s University in Kingston.