“These poems respond to ‘Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night,’ written by Walt Whitman based on his experiences as a medic during the American civil war. Whitman’s poem led me to explore the strange vigils I have kept for the dying and the contrast of the elemental and intensely intimate death described by Whitman with the more sanitized, detached deaths that occur within the ICU.”
visions of northern leopard frogs
splattering against plywood walls
tossed by preteen gangs
who walk paths
flatbeak caps back
limbs splayed
rotate, thud
caught in lawnmower blades
that tame the swamp-edge clearing
thin screams unheard under
two stroke thwacks
slick green skin
aromatic clippings
gasping in ice cream pails
a tuft of grass
an inch of water
a stone
air holes stabbed in
yellow lids, dead mosquitos
stress mottles
skin patterns murky
suffocating in rucksacks
small hands forget
pocket pets
found festered
by moms
among still-folded
tees
a prayer
may they die as they thrive—
in muck
tune their tympanums
(those drums of membrane and cartilage)
to the clumsy signals, grubby hands
of boys trained to war
drink
toss
mow
tame
stow
the blurring half-wake
frozen lake floor silence — ICU discord
baggy green skin breathes — mechanical breath
three chamber heart echoes — mechanical beat
til spring — my ears ring
life redefined
prolonged
outside
the world
is melting
why aren’t you waking up?
your skull too thin
for this paved, curbed
world
*
your heart beats
the headwater of red rivers
in a latex hand beats
on ice
*
your torso a cavern
empty bone cage
an organ at a time
skin shroud stitched
pre-ashing
*
in other bodies
you’ll pump, oxygenate, purify
in test tubes you’ll react to stimuli
populate scatterplots
*
do you belong to me at all?
