Here There Are No Worms No Arthropods
by Sarah Sgro
the mother is a failed metaphor for containment
I defiled her container I count the season's
losses on one leg [initial] [redacted]
my father [initial] Dad loss: a flood
with dreams of vacancy then vacancy
with dreams of floods Are you still dead? I ask
the wave resurging half-way there his skin
is so precarious in dreams illness is preventable
it's August 30th at 10PM I'm flying
home to seize his leg to find the unborn
clot which will erupt migrate to the lung
I can't eclipse this checkpoint in the dream
can't even save him metaphorically once I loved
to study the grotesque as evidence of spillage
abject doctrine of dissociation from the flesh
when the lukewarm body stiffens in my hands
when the membrane bursts inside the upper leg
I don't require evidence to commemorate
a death is bright & useless as my mother's pride
draping a tallit across his neck she defiles
every working organ she has left I don't blame her
for self-mutilation August 31st it wasn't me
the body stiffened in her hands she called
my Mississippi phone I ate a Five Guys patty
in the Hartfield-Jackson Airport flood
of uncles in my home she heard the thump
resound downstairs & ran I'm a ruptured
speaker & nonlinear cartwheeling my fragments
through the air bright & useless all my tricks
why subvert the narrative drape a metaphor
across my neck when he's still dead I love
studying the future tense will is a helping verb
which renders time an excess or a pithy noun
meaning I'll endure despite chronology
the skyline is a stable point standing on one leg