AN EVENING NAP
IS FOR EVIL
We moved into the house
the way mice do.
Brisk, minor movements.
Wary to claim. Fingernails
breaking by the hour, I hedged
the hole in my chest
underneath the magnolia. Malady
for another afternoon.
The man who once lived here
wants my head in a paint bucket
and every noise has a murderous
top note. Gravel on gravel
on gravel. As it should be.
All these artists pretend
being an outcast absolves them
of their property—they must
be exhausted. Praise the
beehive in the north wall
that I am not an artist, not one
to be absolved. Will says hot tubs
make socialists into liberals
and he’s right. We imagine
the public baths as tiny figurines
circling the drain
of a string-lighted back deck.
I search “public baths Syracuse”
and find “Bawdy by Ky,”
a day spa that seems only
to live inside Google Maps.
Inside an empty house a phone
buzzes, becoming eerie. When it rains
I do not know my neighbors.
The loneliness has a gold edge.
Every dream an aging mentor.
Do not cry about
the old life. Cross the paws
and flick the ferns. Wonder at who
cleared the petals off
the sidewalk. Did the rain
do that? Did you? Steel yourself
against the waning of the light
and do not spend a dollar.
Someone will be there to help
when you need it. Say it.
Say it again. Someone
will be there to help
when you need it. You do not
need it.
HOW MANY
RHINOS DOES
YOUR LOSS WEIGH
In a planetarium under
a planetarium the voice
of Liam Neeson will tell you
about the cosmic
microwave background.
Grief so thick
it sets the timeline spinning.
We clutch the railing
and cackle.
Somewhere beyond
the plastic neanderthals
a blue heart refuses rhythm.
Corazon azul but probably
from New Jersey. I didn’t
write it down. The rock
is called diaboleite
and you think demon.
But two English guys
were just mad about boleite,
a mineral that evaded understanding,
and they were even more mad
to find another blue problem.
“Spencer and Mountain
named it diaboleite, meaning
‘distinct from boleite,’
out of ‘desperation.’”
I would have just named it
desperation.
I saw this blue once before—
it was at a bird funeral
it was on the icy perfect
body of the bird
and when Gala handed me
a bag full of seeds to take home
I carried them around in case I found
a place of honor.
When I find myself reaching
for conversation
as I so often do
I say I have bird seed
in my bag if you want some,
because I went to a bird funeral.
People like to ask questions
after that.
Sometimes I say I like noise music
and then have to explain
what that is. It doesn’t help
to say “it’s what it sounds like.”
Or to say “performance”
“industrial” or “no wave.”
Next time I will try “have you
watched a brain scramble
inside someone you loved.”
I will try “Grate me
into the beams.”
When I say I am grieving
they wonder who died
and so do I. One of us did,
or neither one. I walk
the oldest edge of the universe
with a heart like railyard.
A blue problem.
I do not pretend to know
what your heart is like.
HERE FOR
THE RIGHT
REASONS
When people used to go to the underworld
at least they had journeys. Serious undertakings.
Now we just wake up and find ourselves
facing a three-headed dog, asking if anyone’s
ever tried positive reinforcement. A friend
texts me to tell me she’s feeling more evil
than I could possibly imagine and I point out
I can imagine quite a lot. And not even call it
evil. Imagination is memory is a parasite.
Her tough chin a tattoo. No such thing
as infinity in the boiling river but nothing
shocks me either. I do get angry at documentaries claiming to say something about time. Over there
in time is a message from the hospital and yet it lives right here in my phone. And here. And
here. Who gives a shit. An unfathomable array
of universes and in this one women
with lips like glazed grubs compete
to marry a millionaire—or someone who might
not be a millionaire—the television show won’t
tell them yet. Probably this happens in a billion universes. In one of them, instead of watching
Joe Millionaire, I know whether you’re alive or dead. This is physics. If time is infinite, which
it probably is, and if space is not, which
it’s probably not, then at some point every possible configuration of particles will repeat.
The curl of your laugh is so possible.
Even now, when it is not.
Liz Bowen is the author of the poetry collections Sugarblood (Metatron Press, 2017) and Compassion Fountain (Trembling Pillow Press, 2022). She is an assistant professor of bioethics and humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, where she teaches and does research at the intersections of disability studies, health justice, and bioethics. She is the senior poetry editor at Peach Mag and the disability section editor for Public Books. Her writing has been published in Shabby Doll House for the past ten years. :)
