Belated Bris of the Brainsick. Lucas Crawford

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СКАЧАТЬ the hay shirt I was fitted for long, too long, ago,

      Scaredy-crow. Let my drafts of auto-death-prose

      go. Let them fail to decompose. Let them heart-harden

      to papier-mâché. Let me trip on this mummy on a grey

      gentile holiday, nutcrack it open to find inside

      burnt kernels of you. Those are for the chemists

      to investigate while I open, close, open, close

      the blinds like you used to do. Let me pretend

      to live inside your old, jammed viewfinder.

      I wrote your obituary ahead of time.

      Do you remember my catatonic fall? Sundays

      were the scoop-shop outing for I the infirm.

      Mom and I talked about loving Annie Hall.

      (The thought that she’d seen it was uncanny.

      As the Moon Mist melted, it sunk in.

      She meant Annie.) It’s a hard knock life

      not wanting to be part of any club

      that would have you as a member.

      *In someone’s obit I have asterisked this

      as the ideal time at which I would have been told

      I’m Jewish. But tricky us, we wait

      for tomorrow, tomorrow, transplendent

      tomorrow. The Kafkaesque is only a day

      away… I wrote an obit on the back

      of a collage of Keith’s labels held together

      with holy water and melted butter,

      even if some things just don’t mix. The lobster’s

      already dead behind the fridge, hollow shell

      lack-blue. Are you empty too, your liver

      flown the coop, your heart martyred off

      into a collection plate, or split in two,

      then two, then two? No? I’ll wait. Premature

      obits have no expiration date. You’re not

      a celebrity but I don’t want to write in haste.

      Do you ever wonder what a person would

      act like who was literally full of grace?

      My church is high-camp pleasure and low-

      grade pain. When I’m laid at last, chain

      my brain to the gates of the Home for the Godless

      Insane. Stitch me a yellow star out of alternating

      rosary and anal beads. This plan has just one hitch:

       You’re from the 70s and I’m a 90s bitch

      Our niche is failing to fit and we try to be

      too legit for the genre of pre-pre-writ obit.

      We’s the B’ys

      I’s the b’y that builds the boat

      And I’s the b’y that sails her

      I’s the b’y that catches the fish

      And brings them home to Liza.

      – “I’s the B’y,” a Newfoundland folk song

      I.

      I’s the b’y who’s a secret Jew

      and I’s the b’y who wore an xxs yarmulke.

      I’s the b’y who Dad carried on his shoulders

      at the beach, and whose face, framed,

      hung on his boarding-room wall.

      I’s the b’y who was retrieved one day.

      I’s the b’y who’s back with his mother

      and new scum stepdad. I’s the b’y

      fed ketchup sandwiches and knuckle blood,

      and the worst part is that I love her.

      I’s a b’y who you might call a straight white man

      I’s a b’y whose mother tried to crack a rock

      over my head at ten because I was fat.

      I’s a b’y who left at seventeen

      when a beating took my high-pitched hearing,

      and then dropped out of high school

      ’cause there was no bus there from my sister’s.

      I’s the b’y who doesn’t know why I get so tan

      in the summer that customers call me mulatto.

      I’s the b’y flummoxed my frizzy coif wouldn’t

      fall flat into hip, long locks in the seventies.

      I’s the b’y who was born a few years

      after the Holocaust and who never knew

      that I didn’t know why I’m this, and this,

      and this. I’s the b’y who gave an old bastard

      cpr at my post office job today

      and I’s the b’y who couldn’t save him.

      I’s the b’y you’d see as a false-consciousness

      idiot who doesn’t understand my own

      experience because I’m too busy attaining

      the crass capital required to buy blood

      pudding and potatoes, as if your fucking

      hummus СКАЧАТЬ