it is difficult to be treacherous
and it is difficult to be kind
as if being one or another requires a difference
in consciousness, of turning
when they are both
inextricably linked
by desire & faith & an absence
of both
Monthly Archives: October 2007
this smoke off your skin
in a matter of days have gone from a cig or two
to polishing a pack
old habits resurfacing and hopefully won’t be hard to kill
she says, “our son will be breathing this, this smoke off your skin”
and what do i say to that
having already bruised him in the womb
in time, in time, in time
and in every hand held the promise that it will be held again
and in every kiss the promise of yet another
and in every wound the promise that the skin does break
and in every scar the promise that the body will heal
in time, in time, in time
smoke break
every time i come outside for a cigarette
i have to write something
lest the imagination goes wasted
with each breath of cancer
my favorite words
shatter & fuck
comfort & cunt & compassion
sternum & femur & shit
delight & defiance & tongue
restless & alone
& all pronouns, in particular, “you”
contractions, hard and soft
they had begun the night before, as they had last week: contractions hard and soft, not quite steady. she gets an old mickey mouse watch we picked up when we were in florida with the little one last year. mine was already lost and abandoned, still ticking in a drawer somewhere in the den. she notes the time they begin and their duration. looking for rhythm, for a narrowing. sometimes ten minutes part, sometimes seven, then not for an hour or so. but she calls the doctor anyway, can we be squeezed in. late in the afternoon we go.
they strap the fetal heart monitor around her swollen belly, a seat belt over a skinned basketball. they give her a silver little handle with a button at its top and a cord that unwinds back to the machine. the baby’s heart beats mad as he muscles his way around her womb. its a seismograph of delivery, correlating baby’s heart to her contractions. after ten minutes or so, the doctor pops in, gets her in stirrups, snaps on some rubber gloves, and peeks underneath the tissue paper wrapped around her legs and hips.
she shakes her head, snaps off the gloves, “uh-uh. not yet ready yet. you’re not due until the ninth you know, but,” she shrugs, “you never know.” she looks at me and then back to her, “it’s your second one, so he might just pop out.”
any day now, literally any minute.
stutter frame
i’ve become a pile of addictions and gestures that echo in my mind and throughout my body, to remember and breathe, and back again, the action returning to thought, infinitely, from my lips to my hand to your lips, the stutter frame and stammer, repeating again until touched and frozen, never an end but a new beginning, an angle not yet considered.
(i’m being attacked by a monarch butterfly, is it attracted to the cigarette or its bearer?)