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Residues Pajama jacket and a crisscrossed robe, Tartan from some clan of weepy Calvinists, And nothing underneath But this tube and the bag I fill Day and night without trying, Pale gold from my slow-drip distillery— Christ, six weeks into the new year And I’m still St. Thomas of the side effects, Resistant to this slippage in the limbs, The legs gone numb, the right arm that can’t even Raise a fist against its own failed flesh. And always the hectoring repetition of the pills. From my sisters, birthday jokes and condolences. My brother sends an orchid With a dozen spooky blooms, potted under rocks. Early evenings, martini lifting the pain meds to a level Just below euphoria, I match the music to my mood: Do I feel tonight like the greasy croon of Faron Young Or the pinched fiddles of Prokofiev? Or should I listen to The constant crackle of cicadas in my inner ear? How can it be late summer inside When all around me The cold quirks of winter have their way? 41 • • • Here, at the sleepy hinge Of dream and dawn’s rebuke, My mouth’s the only muscle that works at will. It can pout all morning or repeat The stubborn lines of old poets. It can lick The grist and gristle from its lips, Another meal gnawed down, washed with wine. It can kiss the mouth that comforts me, That calms me back When nerves under fear flare out like lightning. Sometimes the words stall and hide Behind the tongue, or cramp up in the mind, or else . . . —Doctor, deliver this thought with your forceps. Longtime lackey of tobacco, Luckies now laid aside, I still crave that drag And the lungs’ release. So, tell me, What end won’t be dark and torturous? But not yet, not while the moon Stays up later than I do, enigmas of light Cloistering the bed. That’s why I bow my neck to this brace and take the medicine— To let the weak links in the backbone heal. Shut-in, exit zipped with a scar, I wait for that day, distant and blue-inched, When the snows will clear and I’ll go out Only half broken, only one long breath from April’s air. • • • 42 ...

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