A Delayed Narration of My Birth on the Order of Twenty Four Years

A Delayed Narration of My Birth on the Order of Twenty Four Years

It is on a Monday that I listen
to my friend Michael, a med-school novice,
describe to me what he had that day seen:
I got to watch a C-Section performed,
he exclaimed, after passing wishes
of well-being on the afternoon of
my birth (though I was, so I’m told, born in
the evening hours, yet that as well
is imprecise, and probably unknown),
and I inform him that it was by this
method that I, as MacDuff, was not of
woman born, as my exit was poised to
happen feet first, entangling my neck
in the cord to be severed to give to
me life.

As expected and desired
(in an admittedly surreal manner),
Michael proceeds to describe in a way
that only the medical community
can, the method by which twenty four years
ago, I was hastily into this
world brought:  You know, I guess you’re supposed to
lose about a liter of blood during
the entire thing, he says, and then, for
emphasis and elaboration, points
out, you could see the resident reach in
and she was covered basically up
to her forearm in blood.

“Oh,” I comment
inanely, gropingly and cluelessly,
needing to fill the pregnant pause; “So did
the blood get on the floor?” I asked, trying
to reconstruct what it might have been like
for the phantom of that mother I call
biological, under bright lights and
the pressure of a sentiment strong that
true labor, literal extraction, blood-
-letting, pain, only to relinquish the small,
slimy, sobbing mess that was me on that
day in December, might have not been wise,
or rather, might border something
we call regret, responsibility;
but for the moment in which she heard me
crying, perhaps she was afforded one
small, vanishing moment, when everything
was not yet known, when, in that bright,
sterile room at the St. Luke Roosevelt
hospital in Manhattan, everything
was potential energy, and the world
had not yet invented disappointment.

Young Mummy

Young Mummy

In May, the students had gone home,
to leave their daily mourning in small Vermont.
Not a week had passed since young graduates
received their proof of purchase (a diploma and a cane)
and began to mettle in world affairs when the news arrived.

Sirens on a Wednesday afternoon, towards 4 pm,
the height of my professional inactivity, heralded
the discovery of the twenty year old, extracted
from the creek where we were afraid he would be found.

I found out by way of an article online, my friend,
a volunteer firefighter, in the accompanying picture
escorting the stretcher.

For the three interceding months in which he was
missing, speculation, wild fantasy, and a sense of community
took hold:  murmurings of foul play, another strike
of the smiley face killer, someone in Cornwall at
4 in the morning, a helicopter photograph
revealing an ‘object of interest’ in Lake Champlain;
candle-light vigils, cops and agents
with HRD, the technical word for dog in these situations,
his forlorn mother leading students into the woods.

I would later hear someone who knows science
that it was fortunate that spring was so cold
and snowy:  if we’d had a normal spring, the
fish would have just gone nuts; the ice basically
preserved his body as perfectly as it could.

The fortunate coroner ruled out foul play,
but did not necessarily cancel the testimonies
from the young man’s first-year friends
regarding certain liberal use of alcohol and a
likely appearance of weed.

So there are no more dogs sniffing in the snow,
their tracks making perfect lines that chilled us more than the wind,
no more posters in the local stores.
Only a website, reminding us that
he was and will always be twenty years old,
still perfectly preserved thanks to the icy creek,
still unaware that he was the first among his equals to die.

I Sang into the Telephone

I Sang into the Telephone

I heard a song this afternoon, as I
meandered in a car not mine along
meandering roads that would soon bring me
back to that place once, and now becoming
again, my home, that brought me quickly back
to Paris, on a morning when we, as
I recall it being said, ‘weren’t
going well,’ and therefore found ourselves in
two different places and apartments,
me on the second phone to be stolen
in my time in that city of skewed mem-
-ories, seated, singing, looking from my
kitchen table facing exactly east
before the building across the way was
being redone, knowing that that was about
the direction I’d have to look to see
you if that distance I could perceive, my
voice transmitting the words of a singer
you knew only by the sounds of him; that
morning I sang, it was a weekend, and
I was alone in my rented space, thus
the seizèd chance to pine loudly
as my cereal sat, getting soggy.

And you, at the end asking, why, why, why
did you feel what you felt, and why, why, why
was there so much meaning in all that had
just happened during the course of this call,
the length of the song, the small number of
weeks of this protean concept of what
it was going to be down the long and
theoretically thorny avenue
of being together, at home, always,
but not quite, ever closer, but not quite.

The Relative Importance of Two Simultaneously Posed Inquiries

The Relative Importance of Two Simultaneously Posed Inquiries

I.  Adelaide, in the library, waits for
the reference librarian, whose queue is
a few students deep, all, like Adelaide,
resigned to the fact that their journeys, both
academic and practical, at times
need the assistance of others, if not
for the answers, at least for directions.

II.  And while awaiting the meeting with the
patient voice behind the desk, another
question forges its way into her head,
by way of a well-placed poster, asking
what singular book you would choose to
possess if on a deserted island
you found yourself stuck.  She digests this line
of inquiry, elevated now to
a level of relevance higher than
the one that placed her here at the outset.

III.  Suddenly immediate, terribly
intriguing, and, hopefully, woefully
irrelevant, Adelaide is sent to
this imaginary island, casting
one-by-one her books into the sea,
watching as they float, the water wetting
the pages, facilitating the waves’
complete consumption of this cerebral
collection, sinking to the ocean floor,
sliding down her spinal cord and out of
the realm of possible choices to answer.

IV.  Adelaide never does decide which book
she’d read while conceivably mortal, which
one would provide for infinite inter-
-pretation, the same pages different
each time that her fingers touch and turn them.
What is more, she has now forgotten the
reason why she placed herself into this
queue, a fact which, as it is her turn to
pose her question, causes some discomfort.

Man Hands and Woman Wrists

Man Hands and Woman Wrists

Traveling north one year ago, she sat across from me on the train, trying so hard not to look like she was trying so hard to blend in, or at the very least, not to attract the wrong set of stares.  Her hair could have been naturally grown out past what it would have been before she was her, but given the copper color and very even length, I am dubious; her clothing fit, sufficiently, but no more than that.

The thick, broad jaw line might have been a suggestion, but as I continued my study of her down the shoulders, over her silvered, jingly wrists, I came upon the giveaway:  her broad, not entirely depilated hands clutching her purse, still stiff, perhaps genuinely leather, who’s to say, with a quiet, nervous ferocity as her eyes darted around, trying to discern if her cover had been blown and with what consequence.

Upon spotting those living exhibits of evidence, I greeted the revelation with hesitation, regret; after all, she was working with such visible effort to be that which was meant, but not granted, my analyzing eyes being a tiny, perceptible prevention towards that achievement.  Her glance when briefly our journeying scans found themselves upon one another snagged, one of mild trepidation, was also eager, even thankful for the attention.

I wondered about her, as I exited the train, and asked myself, among other, more meaningful lines of inquiry, what for her might feel like home, and who, ultimately, she was looking for to look for her.

Before He Was Lyle

Before He Was Lyle

I.
The students look at him as he is wheeled
into view, on a cold metal table
in a cold metal room; a few turn their
heads, to the side, away, and back again.

II.
They had read of him before this moment,
of his profession, cause of death, mostly
true, mostly from cancer of the lungs (he,
it turns out, was a smoker of no light
breed), and learned of his profession, past.

III.
He was a baker and a husband, the
effects of the former apparent in
his muscle structure, and the latter of
which manifested itself, perhaps
with his cigarette affliction, were he
here to narrate the exact reasons why.

IV.
From his shoulder injury, they learned of
his military service, before he
was a baker or a husband; where he
served was not revealed, as it bore little
relevance to the analysis of
his body, its quirks, their education.

V.
He couldn’t have predicted the nature
of the conversations that would go on around
him while the students cut and poked (of the
weekend plans, the latest test, the gossip),
or the fights that would erupt (over who
carried not their weight, over who was too
stressed out, over what they were observing),
or, for that matter, what would happen to
his body, when he signed it over to
the scientific community of
the young and hopeful, the poor and sleepless.

VI.
Soon, though, his head will be removed, and the
procedure will call for the students to
place it upon his chest, and obey this
they doubtless will, for this is their first year,
too early to question, to pressed for time
to ponder what Lyle would have thought if
he had known that he was to end up so
oddly respected and strangely arranged.