For Micheal
you are out on a day pass
from the hospital, the green
plastic band still around your wrist
I take you to an island to show you
how to break into abandoned buildings
we climb through the river,
around the bundles of razor wire
the medication makes you slow, makes
your tongue dart left and left
I make you take your shirt off
so I can photograph you against
the ruined rooms, the windows
warped as a broken mouth
later you show me a red hole
in your beautiful yellow hair
where the razor wire had cut to the bone
4 comments:
I love poems that trip me up. Most do it with a corker of a punch line but this wee gem manages it with the line "how to break into abandoned buildings" – quite unexpected; I had no idea where the poem was going from there. Very effective and enough left unsaid too.
I agree with Jim.
i just learned why most poems have short lines, coz i just learned to read a line like you wouldn't believe (unless you look into the math of railway acceleration) (in the poetic way)
(basically, when a train starts to move, the acceleration drops from infinity, and then begins to move. if only i had applied to engineering school :-)
Jim, Collin and Jesse-- Thanks so much! This poem just got tore to pieces by Kim Addonizio's workshop.
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