Accidents

St. Clair 43 Philip St. Clair Accidents One AM: I hear the car pull up, The back door open and slam— Mom dresses, shuffles down chipped stairpads To the kitchen, I put on pants and shirt, Come down too, stand in the doorway barefoot, Watch Dad, head bowed, sit talking to her, A full lunchbucket brooding by the sink, His jacket wadded on the floor, his face egg-pale Under the bright, harsh kitchen light: He couldn't take it, had to come home, There was an accident at the plant, a guy was feeding Sheet-steel into the slitter and got both arms caught Right up to the shoulders, they had to use Cutting torches to try and get him out, He couldn't stop screaming, the medics came, Gave him morphine but he couldn't stop screaming, Then everybody left, said to hell with it, Walked off the job and didn't even punch out. I turned away, rolled my eyes, went back upstairs, Thinking it was all some dumb gimmick To knock off work early, pulled my comicbook box Out from under the bed, looked at all the good ones Where blood was printed on so thick It buckled the paper, stained both thumbs: Sometimes it oozed to the edge of the page When cops shot yellow lines through crooks, Or when it dripped off gurneys in the morgue, Or in the graveyard where the rotting corpse Bit out the pretty girl's throat. But that afternoon Some smartass kid from down the street Ran off the bus and didn't look Got hit by a car, and when I saw him lying there, One leg cocked the wrong way at the knee, front teeth Splintered and pink, I got faint, bent over double, Threw up all over the sidewalk. ...