Issue 10

Spring 2002

John Sweet

 

when i finally write this

there are missing
pieces
both before and after
the operation

the breast
the appendix
the soul
and maybe the cancer is
hungrier than anyone
imagined

maybe you're
four years dead when i
finally write this

these words
too late and not
nearly enough

my apology rising
slowly above
the rooftops then
gone

a man with your father's face

later that same day
parked out near the county line
on burnt hill road

not drunk but getting there
and always angry

i told you about the baby
slammed to death on some faded stretch
of midwest sidewalk and
you smiled

i found a better song
on the radio

this was the
last good summer
or maybe the one after

the one where you ended up marrying
a man
with your father's face

a man with your father's temper
and i drove to the ocean alone
with a trail of your tears
to lead me back home

and maybe home was
two small rooms
and each one full of ghosts

maybe my hands were
the hands of christ dreaming
of your breasts

i never meant for you
to end up being numbered
among the holy

driving west through drought

hungover in the thick white heat
of the season
of butchered children

the river cannot last forever

the junkies have
nothing left to sell

i promised my son
something more than a pregnant woman
stabbed a dozen times and left to rot
but i was misinformed

this is all there is

every street leads to the door of
the dying man's house

every metaphor is a
symbol for loss

do you believe in the
patron saint of starving horses?

it's a simple question
with no answer

imagine that your father
drank himself into a bitter grave
and that his father
did the same

is there an exact moment where
impotent anger blackens and twists
into self-pity or is it a more
complicated process?

can a room filled with
pale grey ghosts
still be called empty?

all i really need is a way
to keep the blood of the past
from washing my son
beyond my reach forever

closest to my heart

on monday
the killer laughs
and on tuesday he's
executed

it rains
in the morning
but dries up
later on

i pour poison
down the holes my wife
has discovered in
the back yard

***

i weed the same flowers
i weeded
three days ago

the same ones
i will weed again in
four more

***

on wednesday
a friend's father dies
suddenly
and the baby runs
a fever of
102

any number of gods
are asked to produce
any number of miracles

what i think of
on the way to
the doctor's office are
the palest blue eyes
i've ever seen

***

this and
that i will
never be able to
protect the ones i
hold closest to
my heart

***

and that the word
for this is
not necessarily
failure

comfort

at some point
this day becomes too
heavy

the sky fallen
to the water's surface
leaves the drowning
without hope

what i have to offer
are words
but not their meanings
and there is a man i know
who has buried both of
his daughters in this
chalky soil

who says he has
no use for the poem

no use for asylum or
for any of the bitter roads
that lead to it
and it's down the most
deserted one that i have
built my small
guilty house

four walls of fragile bone
a clean floor for the
baby to crawl on
and still the words
refuse to reflect any
sunlight

they fall thick from
the tongue to kill
whatever flowers they
land on and
the flowers aren't flowers
but dreams

beautiful and bleeding
and there is a man i know
who has moved beyond
the need for
comfort

this overwhelming
black weight of inertia
will be my gift
to him

© John Sweet

 

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