Poems
Healing
When I thought I might die,
not eventually, but very
soon, I treated me more kindly,
Good Enough
Three weeks after my mastectomy, I traveled south.
I slung my carry-on bag crosswise over my body
and jostled my way through the airport, the bag
in front of me, to form a barrier, protecting my incision.
I let my arm rest on the bag,
to take the tension off the shoulder.
In the Regression of Aging Bodies
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
How to Get Enough Pain Medication to Allow You to Die
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.
Recurrence
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?
Dying Is Ugly
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
Continent
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
Gratitude
When was the last time I combed my hair?
Before the ambulance, even longer
when the plate shattered
and he cleaned it up without speaking.
You Are Made of Grace
What beauty the world holds cupped between
light and dark,
everything mortal,
rising with the sun, the grass bright with the shine of rain.