Unseen Places

[dl04]

Cracks in the skin
salvaging some kind of resistance,
needles pointed to the door,
while the radio finally burns out.

Rodent fingers seek vulture fix
scouring the floor
licking the air
of something still lingering.

Police took away the infant comfort,
and allowed the scars to spread
from unseen places
to a mauling in the open.

[barrie]

I think you could change the tenses in the first verse, especially with ‘pointed’ - You have the main scene set as if it’s still happening and the outcome set in the past which works quite well, so you need ‘pointed ‘ to be in the present tense. I’d also be tempted to use ‘salvage’ instead of the participle, and ‘as’ instead of ‘while’.

‘Cracks in the skin
salvage some kind of resistance,
needles point to the door
as the radio finally burns out.’

Although I’m not sure what you mean by ‘vulture fix’ (do you need an article here?), this verse certainly adds to the bleak atmosphere of the poem. I like the menacing sound of -

licking the air
of something still lingering.

Strong last verse, although ‘infant comfort’ is a little obscure.

Good to see you posting in this section - nice one.

Barrie

[thefallofRome]

This left a rather.. gory impression, although I'm not positive that you intended it.

I also felt that the first stanza was the weakest, especially since the imagery of the second stanza is so strong ( "Rodents seek vulture fix" is awesome--really delivers animalistic fixation with "vulture fix") and the emotional twist in the last stanza ("infant comfort," "mauling in the open") finishes the poem so well.
The weakness might be because of differences in verb tenses that Barrie mentioned in the previous comment. His suggested alteration of the verse sounds stronger to me.

--Rome.