the other was a mouth like a line of ink an ever-present riptide of sound he was gone before he came in sucked backwards through an open door
Uncategorized
nothing ever happened
we cast our gaze to our hands and remember the things we never did shadows on a wall
Torrey Pines Blvd and La Jolla Shores Drive
I became Catholic and I went to a skating rink and there was Joe.
The only thing I was ever good at was making babies.
What do I do with all of this bitterness?
Where will it go when I die?
I’m alone again
I consult the Geiger counter
in the cave of my throat
to measure the mortal
rate of decay
it’s impossible to predict
from the series: dead men I have loved #5
there’s something about train stations in winter the interminable longing in too thin a coat sweat gone to ice around the neck and the men will never be there but then they are snow-silent in warmed cars moving through darkness towards something like home
from the series: dead men i have loved #3
you came around when i was four eating coffee beans by the handful from a bag that sat wedged against the armrest of your Chrysler Plymouth filterless camels caftan and headdress belly dancers on 35mm taped to the bedroom wall baklava and leather loafers my best friend once i walked across South Bend to ring the doorbell to your apartment i was six you were dying your hair you mixed sugar on a plate of tahini i ate it with my fingers like some sort of stray animal until my mom came and got me
ocean floor apology
your grief was so big that when you turned up your palms to me i cracked on contact in an instant my lungs filled with water parenchyma turned to pumice and I fell backwards in a slow dive through the thermocline abyss the world was a tunnel of light first weak then mottled until it was gone for four months i drifted quietly past lost cities spying through unhinged balustrades tube worms growing on parquet floors the translucent skins of young girlfriends baking bread on tectonic plates wounds slashed in the volcanic sea mount so necrotic that they created their own weather patterns of rot and finally settled mute and decisive in the primordial silt an infinite pause a crypt-silent nautilus of waste pregnant with the heavy thing that hope becomes when it is dead in deep sea slow motion a ghost crab pads softly past puffing up years of gentile sediment with its fragile finger bones four days later it is gone from view having silently slipped past the curve of the horizon
suburban bedroom teen
the sound of the garage door opening
mom’s side or dad’s
the click- then tired drag
night reveals uncertain pasts
A smell wakes me. At first, I cannot remember where I am. A mattress on the floor of an unfurnished apartment. Lights from passing cars carve arcs across the popcorn ceiling. Have I vomited?
My one-year-old son is tangled somewhere in the sea of sheets. I slip about in my sweat. Or is it milk? Rotten milk that fell from my child’s open mouth, lost in a groove and smelling sweet.
I know this smell. It’s nothing like that. It is a smell from years ago. A trauma ICU. A mix of respiratory secretions and chlorhexidine mouth wash.
My first patient out of nursing school, a boy barely old enough to be treated in an adult ICU. Intubated and restrained, a smear of face under plastic and tubes. Hardly human.
Using a badge and a password, I access a robotic chest of drawers with hundreds of cubicles that disseminate medications. Fifteen drawer simultaneously spring to life. Tiny cups of liquid that resemble the complementary single serving jam containers at the chain restaurants lining interstate 85, to be inserted into nasal tubes, pre-loaded syringes for screwing into IV ports, glass vials for drawing up single doses of intramuscular injections. A horror show of wizardry designed to bypass human barrier systems.
My son swims to me across the expanse of mattress. He paws at my body, a kitten kneading for his milk. His sleep is sure.
The smell of death curdles in my chest.
when I was me
only those born in the wilderness will see the Promised Land