Help me out of this wreck.
Small pieces of shattered car window like sand,
still gritty between my back teeth.
We’ll be taking your vitals. Smiling faces,
the wall clock’s black secondhand,
and the climate control stirring flowers
of condolence as if it were a real breeze
in this airtight quarantine. So sorry that
it happened. So glad it wasn’t worse.
They come and go and I devour every morsel
of sympathetic icing on the invalid cake.
Invasive, rays thrown right through the cracks
in my frame, the compromise of
structural integrity. They do their best,
change my sheets and gown. Deep breaths
stab and the struggle out of bed
just to take a piss.
I heard it coming. No memory slideshow.
Just the dread of bracing myself and the fear
I wouldn’t make it out in time. Blood
tests and IVs—solipsism fails when tubes connect you
to things besides yourself. The hallways carry
voices and footsteps. I’m waiting,
but the constant hum of the suction machine
seems like silence now.
Conditions and complaints bleed
through the walls: an enema discussed
in broken English and curses rolling down the corridor
for a call button not responded to
quickly enough. I probably wished for this.
Everyone does, convinced there’s nothing better
than getting paid, without effort? Easier
on the drawing board. Surgery brought more
pain than I expected.
I wash myself and swallow pills, wondering
what it means to heal
as the release date continues to recede.
Unblinking wounds more easily faced
when the safety of gauze separates like a priest
receiving confession behind his screen, unsightly
torn tissue best kept
bandaged for now.
Help me out of this bed.
On the 10th, as the heavy drops
came down on us, slipping
between Manhattan’s buildings,
my brother and I ducked into
a Starbucks for some shelter
and a hot drink. The line was
long, snaking away from the counter
and behind me, an insipid noise
gradually demanded my attention—
a litany of what seemed to be mumbled
nonsense: “bike messengers care, policemen
care, ambulance drivers care, Starbucks
servers care, firemen care” etc etc. What
the fuck was this lunatic rambling about
And who did he think he was addressing?
Eventually, I remembered what shirt
I’d put on that morning, a cynical
rhetorical question emblazoned
across my chest in bold black letters:
WHO CARES? Apparently, this
soggy deranged urbanite had
a stack of answers he couldn’t keep
to himself. Disgruntled, I
unknowingly fled from a prophecy
that’s still ringing in my ears, echoing
more loudly than the collapse
it preceded by less than a day.
I walked slowly to overhear
the recently renewed debates;
the dialogue of falling rain
on infant leaves and
the conversation between
the stream and its banks.
Birds’ discourse my only choir,
though not as much Sunday singers
as post-service parishioners
chatting over coffee,
warbling, rambling about nothing
in particular.
I hear you finless toe and finger folks
can stroll through all that air with ease,
but it’s hard for me to picture.
I was up there once, out of water,
and I couldn’t budge my body further
than a convulsive flop would take me.
Luckily, they threw me back down here
where I can glide, dart, steer and breathe
better than any awkward flailing human.
You see, this is my air.
Sitting near the back of a narrow wooden church, a composite,
as is so often the case in dreams, of sanctuaries I’d been in, seen,
or imagined before. An aisle ran down the center of the vacant
room with a row of plain, stiff pews to either side. Dust floated in
the comforting columns of daylight streaming through
curtained windows into the otherwise dim brown space. All this
was straightforward enough, but sitting in front of me:
a Buddhist monk. The smiling young man, standard shaved head
and saffron robe, had turned around to speak with me. Instead
of a begging bowl, he offered a small dish rag and a humble white
coffee mug—the sort you find in all-night diners, endlessly
refilled. The scene played out like a film montage
of a conversation subsumed by soundtrack because the gist is
understood. I grasped his message without hearing words—
a tutorial on how to wash more than just the outside of a cup.
No matter how clean the vessel seems, the inside must not be
overlooked. I was startled awake by the contents of my own skull.
An old man in Athens; grey
clothes, hair, and beard
tattered. Walking alone
with the help of a cane.
He just stopped there
for a moment as if lost,
staring down at ancient shoes.
And I thought, “Oh, Zeus!
What’s this piteous state
you’ve come to?”
All your temples toppled
and your strength forgotten
by everyone including you.
David Russomano grew up in the coastal town of Stratford, Connecticut, and continued his education just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at Messiah College. While studying abroad in Greece and India he developed a passion for travel. Since graduating in 2006 with a BA in creative writing and earning a TESOL certification in Costa Rica, he has been teaching English in Asia and filling pocket journals with the scraps of observation and contemplation that grow into his poems. His poetry has been featured in Write from Wrong, This Great Society, Red Booth Review, Phantom Kangaroo, REDzine, and Thoughtsmith. It is also scheduled to appear in forthcoming issues of Pure Francis and Poetry For The Masses. He currently teaches English in Turkey.
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ISSUE:
S U M M E R
2012
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