You pocket a cloud of powdered milk.
I swat at a rubbery whiff.
Did I just speak?
A mute son pushes his chatty daddy's wheelchair up a steep bridge.
It's my shin bone. A door is goaded shut.
Nausea is a place. I demand to be frisked.
My nipples dock, your face liquidates.
Each thought forms a picket line.
A woman sleeks into place, eyes our fistful of checks and truckload of debt.
We've tried to be responsible but our credit rating keeps eating our dog.
Somewhere in the world, a girl carries a turtle through traffic
toward the rush of a river. His patchwork belly, a sharp inhale
against the steady current. She lowers him to a soggy bank,
turns back to road, can't bear to witness the water.
We are arbiters of joy, kettling revolutions of hearts.
I will never know how to be a person
but I promise to work damn hard at human
like the Postman who answers letters addressed to God.
Uprooted tree on the sidewalk, its shortest
branch engulfed in a paper bag. All night bender.
Little girls with slimy coolers selling Cheetos
for Cancer. A dollar for a 25 cent pack.
I want to say America so you might forgive
the Brooklyn of my imagery. But no country's
got me tottering in three inch heels in the
Home Depot parking lot hunting for flowers.
I'm dreaming of dreaming of carrots as I flip
the Cheetos bag inside-out and fuck shine
with shine. This is the sort of morning that breathes
if you're watching, delivers brilliant lectures
of light and air if you're listening
followed by terminal quiet, the world a sudden
classroom after the last chair scrapes to still.
We are vacuum-sealed into our brains again,
peopling the land. Garnishing silence.
Um is Om's first-cousin: sound that contains
all sounds kin to a speech impediment.
I pivot toward home (remember the parking lot)
flowerless; stutter down the Avenue like a kneeless beast,
clopping a two-word story: I'm Sorry I'm Sorry.
Several men bid for a piece of my paralysis.
I unlock the door to the inside, which we've turned
into a picture of the outside. It's going to rain
but it won't, Wittgenstein said in order to explain
something. The apartment building is an echo
of a thought in sight he said except for the apartment
part. You can hate me because I said Wittgenstein
but you'll only be hating the echo of a thought.
In the dusk-haze with thrumming heels,
I believe I see a man praying in a pool of light
at the base of the stairs. This is the time of day
when my eyes rediscover the god the parasite
left behind, renaming life at random. I seem
to believe I see a man crouching at the foot.
The man seems to believe he is garbage.
So what if the man is a heap of smelly black bags.
So what if revelry enters my heart sideways.
I know a drunk tree singing the blues, a charity of chips.
Coriel O'Shea Gaffney received her MFA from The City College of New York where she is also an Adjunct Lecturer and Yoga Instructor. She has been a featured poet for the Earshot! and Franklin Park Literary Series, the louderARTS Project, Spoken Word Café, and the Literary Salon. As a member of the feminist collaborative 500Genders, she has featured at the Bowery Poetry Club, Stain Bar, and Perch Café. Publications include: Lyre, Lyre, Union Station, Shakefist, and Promethean. Coriel is the recipient of the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award in Poetry.