The last poem should show the way — oh, we’ve been dicking around, it will say, but not hardly now. The last poem goes only as far as we are willing
to allow … Taken, like a hostage
or a pill, bottle of vitamin C crushed into orange powder, doused with milk and sugar
and Metamucil, some chai tea you waited for, in a terribly long line
at the Starbucks,
the heart doing flip flops
at the human faces it sees, turned
in double take, quick recognition
and expectation
of hot flash or agony, the last poem a bullet, brought us to both knees breaking
in a sweltering morning, cavern
of strength
through the aftermath of dope dream and too much mocha
makes me dreadful sick, the poem says; and we believe it. Refer to a certain line
remembered from before, to be sure, the 12 Step meeting of addicts who talked
of surrender; and when it got most awkward, hung on
every word, listened with hands clasped between splayed legs
and fingers wringing like two small animals joined by tentacles that should never, ever touch each other, or another; you don’t think you’re able to get through it much longer, says a voice in the room, pounding the table with palm, for emphasis; but you will, and we do, the poem answers with a small rattle of seizure before it’s through, someone’s phone goes off, the ring tone an insipid piano trill, played with long pasty ghost fingers in a studio, the sound of the poem turning blue, as the phone rings and rings, ”shut that fucking thing off,” someone else hisses, just before the last poem is through, someone is breathing for it, with mouth pressed to wet lips pried open by finger tips, the V of near-vulgarity, and breath pumped
in electric streams, palms compressed and leaning
down on the prostrate ribs, hissing by the numbers through clenched teeth, twenty five, twenty six
—and a siren‘s deep
keening, outside, approaching from the sticks to city center,
a blade slashing the night open
like a mind on some withering stalk.
I had to get out of there.
I booked on, I walked away, blameless. I found love
for the first time three days after; she was long and warm and wet, the kind of human psalm
you won’t forget at a meeting, her sweet voice turning into the poem that sits on my desk, fluttering through the throes of any death or love, moaning and rising
for the rafters.
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