A Guide to Falling Down Stairs

You’ll need dollar store flip-flops  the shabbier the better you’ll need

a black Glad bag a busted porchlight  you’ll want a fine char on the cutlets

so set the burner to high before you step  onto the porch listen to it simper

the cicadas fulmination like meat  spitting in cast iron they are mallets

planishing an unseen anvil you’ll want  to savor this because what follows

is hell descending elbow to cement  toenails wrenched on the rails

down to the frozen bottom and  nothing to do there but wail

to the one AM stars who might  have been regal but for this gash

you are Sisyphus shoving  the cumbersome boulder of your body

against the iron rail  what a relief somehow

to watch bruises fan out like ink on rice paper  finally a pain you can finger

think of your father miles away  a maze of cables and drips

his lungs swell with fluid no doctor  can show you can’t spoon out

and if you really listen they are not mallets  but a heart monitor that you measure

against your own and must somehow live  on rise up and ascend