2 Poems

Scattered Ashes

Most of my life is a game of racquetball
(I can’t like any of myself).

This poem is a translation
from the jar of tears I never cried
after watching The Elephant Man
and gasping, seeing that John Merrick’s left hand
was the only part of his body that was not disfigured,
and thinking that its calmness was spreading
across his body
to make him radiate beauty.

I thought there was a poem to be found there,
but something didn’t quite fit.

I wanted to relate it to my own self
but I could not locate my own unscathed left hand.

My actual left hand bears a small white scar
from where I accidentally lacerated the tissue
when I was eight years old at my younger sister’s
birthday party; I was trying to make a mask
out of a weird kind of camouflage party hat
(the world writes its own poems).

I am more like a fish
in a glass bowl
that is rolling down the side of a mountain

and the bowl shows my reflection
and the bowl never breaks.

You told me that all my attributes
are more than just a fortress
to surround something rotten

but you are speaking to a wall

and I am standing
behind it.

Motion Sickness
after Conor Oberst

Life is not a room
People don’t just enter
through some door
drop odd objects and disappear
Everything including you
is in constant motion
The first time I died
my failed red heart had to choose
just one way to paint my body
I could have been a ballerina
spinning frantic, toppling over
into stupor
I could have been a trembling hand
I became a peeling wall
a black hole
a beacon of loneliness
became abstract fire
to warn rooms of people
avert, avert your eyes
I radiate nothing, save for
this pale beam of doubt
please don’t watch my light
that smacks the floor and shatters
I am searching for a place to feel solid
standing still before the thunderstorm
this planet holding its breath
getting dragged around the Sun