Visiting Hours at the Color Line. Ed Pavlic

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СКАЧАТЬ flash, suspends us

       over deaths, we wonder how, were not our own.

Flight 577 : Atlanta to Chicago : Seat 27 F

       —after Raheem DeVaughn

       In 27 D the woman beside me on AirTran

      tells her year-old son in 27 E

       you wanna see daddy

      don’t touch that again A six-week-old

       daughter in her arm

       a cresent-shaped scar

       on her throat appears thru frayed-end braids

      she’s dipped in peroxide

       Over the scar

       a sleek-eyed tattoo with angular brows

      Under what the eyes know in

       cursive

       about where the tattooed eyes’ mouth

      would be and diagonal across the scar’s the word future

       I’m helping with the boy’s belt

       with one hand

       and trying my damnedest to get a no-look

      photo of the tatt with my phone

       We taxi : the boy’s got one

       earphone in his ear the other in his mouth

       she asks me could I turn

       the channel

      to “Urban Blast” and make sure he doesn’t touch the control

       —by the time we’ve got ourselves

      up above the seatbelt sign

       he’s out

      and the earphone escapes his open mouth

       the baby’s out too and the woman

       closes her eyes

      deep The future of what her throat knows

       stares at me thru the braids and she nods to the music

       her whole body nods baby’s sleep

      her head doesn’t move

       My right ear’s in the engine my left knows

       the song :

       suspended sentence pain handed down

       that’s the sound goes round

       and round

       —my brother’s in the ground

       bad-handed shuffle and a blank deck of fears

       eye to eye with a falsetto sky

       —women standing around broken

       together and staring back at you like a jury of your mirrors

Waking Up in Chicago after Dream Song 29

       —for Jordan

       just short of a month ago I burned a first edition

      on the hearth

       and scooped the blistered ash don’t ask

      into an airtight container I keep it next to the sugar

       sun up I stir a teaspoon of this shade and heavy cream

      into coffee and there’s breath clean

       as knife-wind in the brain blown down

      the full length of the lake whipped into white waves

       they break on broken concrete slabs ice ripples

      its hook-fingered rebar

       spine reinforced pearls condense

      in the tight and curled-down sky parts of me

       in the hair of his forearm the lake’s black & pitched on us

      in sheets that catch the flame of the city

       in the air as for air there’s just enough

      for now the doors of the car frozen shut and it’s him it’s not him it’s

       the taste of his voice in my mouth it’s not my mouth

      we talk every day which is never today

       til there’s nothing to say til no ache polices his veins

      til nothing ever ached like my mouth which is not my mouth

       for his as for now as if it was now and so ever would

      the battery’s been dead quiet storm gone

       and we’re tangled around each other for warmth

      the past’s nothing if not the irregular pulse of his lap

       in my ear and that cop saunters and wags

      and pisses on the car and thank christ leaves us to freeze

       before we can’t breathe or just breathe

      before we can’t freeze either way it was all there and now it’s not

       go ahead : take the dice and let them kick up on the curb

      you can walk away before they’re still

       if you want but don’t tell me there’s no number

      on the ground don’t say the last breath can’t be the last

       and after that it’s not breath just don’t ok

      til you’ve kicked the rear window out & let night be this night

       and splash to life all on your face which is this face

      that sounds that sound that sounds like that sound

       like my hands that ache beneath this ice as for friends and this ice

      and love and СКАЧАТЬ