The Anti-Grief. Marianne Boruch

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      small and dark include

      all the better to see you with, my dear, said the wolf

      in that bonnet swiped from

      the grandmother he ate. Try to figure a logic there

      if you come into the story midway. Which

      is every human’s condition.

      Case in point: my family’s ridiculous habit,

      showing up to movies halfway through. Then sitting

      the same mileage into the next run—

      theaters couldn’t care less, all day if you wanted—

      until scenes got familiar, a runaway train, a kitchen knife

      redropped. Until my mother, reduced

      to a whisper: this is where we came in meant

      finish your popcorn, we’re going.

      If I told you

      the screw-up, the backstory

      of that thing I should

      tell you… Ugh. Such earnestness in the world

      is exhausting. Consider the local Y, full up

      with the breathless on machines,

      persistent perfect shapes-to-be while

      the youngest among us sit poolside, stunned

      to a rivet by a crushing coach.

      Look at my nose! shouts the bellowed monster of the shallows.

      Their little heads turn.

      To sleep is to dream all the way. But too much

      of that thing went on today.

      I lower my head to the pillow for my brain

      to be washed all night—

      Because you said

      that happens, that’s the drill. Whatever fluids

      I had no part in making

      run ragtag and rivered over my

      bleak-in-there, for hours.

      A Rescue

      The whale might, she might vaguely recognize

      human cries of those drowning

      as some distant tribe of fin

      and blowhole. And the damaged

      submarine, her cousin once twice

      three times removed, huge and gray

      in the blood-let Atlantic’s notorious

      cold beyond cold lined at bottom with

      outrageous fish whose photos in a glossy

      seasick book could wide-eye you

      to some moon creature,

      their razors on stalks bright-blinking

      right off their heads to terrify or protect.

      So the great species of the planet

      unite underwater where we earth-stuck

      oxygen eaters rarely look or think to look.

      And on hearing those cries—

      Wait, doesn’t the whale have a massive

      mammal heart, a child could

      run through it. That sound, such a flood

      to the brain. (Brain curious as a calf in spring

      folded up, tangled, still wet

      from the going.) Do something! billows

      and bells through the hopeless

      slate-blue. The whale’s identical first

      cell of us too in that watery void before

      we turned sea creature here,

      land breather there, damned the same to

      archangel across, down deepest

      lost. Stunned ocean. Unquiet.

      Wound

      I found a paper ruler made

      to measure one exact. Up to six inches or

      in centimeters, take your pick.

      A little worn and bent

      in one place. Now on a shelf on its

      calibrated edge. Imagine

      the ambulance, an EMT close, reading

      tiny print. Discard

      after single use. And I wonder

      if shattered glass and smoking engine

      got in the way of rescue, whether

      the wound one inch or two, if the jagged fleshy depth

      really a trapdoor the spirit took

      to leave the body for good.

      I have a kit in my car, a zippered black bag of

      bandages and ointment, a knife, scissors in there,

      and inexplicitly, rope—what else—

      Endless gauze. A waterfall of gauze, a frozen field

      of gauze but soft, the opposite of chain mail

      knights wore into battle, told

      sure, every fight is noble. But even history forgets

      why oh why oh why.

      Blood-rush. Garish shock of

      alive! escape! An ambulance fact sheet says

      abridgment, says a complete

      exorcism—did СКАЧАТЬ