“Who am I, do you know me,” she cries,
this day when earth has turned to rot and mud.
she can not see but for the blaze of anger,
she can not hear the softer voices calling.
We’re together in the kitchen when you say
you talked to your new doctor,
the one who ordered up an EKG
because he said he’d heard a skip, a stutter.
Dr. MacDougall measured the weight
of a human soul by placing a man
on a sensitive scale just before death
and weighing him a second time after.
Braid a child’s hair in precise beaded rows
And shave a scalp just enough to access
Skin flap, skull, brain, tumor
Fold over a learner’s fingers to guide a needle
This angle here with this much pressure
Slide together into a hidden space
drink water
let ocean in
tears roll
erase beach
unground you
he found the gate unlatched,
crossed the downy path
into the volant field,
There was the bed bent in half,
the needle in the wrist,
the crack of bathroom light under the door.
Your father tried to sleep in the hospital cot
There are buttons he can’t slip in notches
And zippers he forgets to zip
There are broccoli stalks that need slicing
And urine stains scoured from floors
There are socks that need feet
And shoes that need their socks
The doctors will visit you
at your hospital bed because
that is what they do.
When they ask you if it hurts here,
say Yes it hurts here.
What was it my father said to me
when I forgot to latch the gate
and we spent the night in the woods
searching for eyes among shadows
of tree trunks cast by flashlight?
Bang my shins, my temple on the gritty wall
Of Charlie’s deathbed
Where we do not wrest the truth
But beg him Let us change the (piss-stenched) sheets.
He will not go for tests, insists, denial overarching
Contact: from the Latin for touch.
Isolate: from the Latin for island.
Because your breath had touched mine,
I was obliged to metamorphose
into a separate land mass,
to wear a collar of brine
like a heavy gurgling yoke
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