Dead, or Worse

Originally published on the Rose Books Hotline, September 23 2024. Cover art for the Hotline release by Christopher Norris. This poem is designed to be experienced in audio form; however, a full version in text form is also available below.

We are out: of quarantine and of salted butter 

I like full moons; you like dinner dates

We end up seeking out both

Digging into North Beach until we hit a restaurant ending in i–

Alberti's, Fattori's, Sodini's 

Let's be bad, we say, meaning we might as well die for it

In those times, you had to pan for connection,

Shake things off until you struck significance

You had to say: Table for two, please, and

We'd both like to be different after it ends

The food is just okay

You exclaim, fresh pasta! but I see bales of it 

Wrapped in plastic above the open kitchen

So it's not enough. So we try to scare ourselves

I say: let's talk of graves, and worms, and epitaphs

Or just, you know, of anything worth exhuming

It can be the story, for example, of the first time I made my mother cry:

At seven I was swinging that toy club

Striking off the skulls off lion-hearted weeds in the adjoining lawn

Children do that. All are witches at one point:

Concerned with herbs, stones, sacrifices, soups

But this time the ritual had my mother rushing out with an ambulance temper

She'd seen the neighbor man, who wasn't well

Who would stalk perimeters bare-chested, airing out his moles

Who on that day was throned on some compost heap, 

In view of my childish swings that decapitated his weeds

Which by extension uncrowned his kingdom

Which by extension ordained his punishment

I twist a strand of hair around one finger, and it floats down

Red hair red napkin red sauce red wine

I have to finish the story in order to get to the tears

But find it wants to stay in my throat

How she held me to her chest with a nursemaid's suffocation

Said that if I keep doing that, he would hurt me,

Saying that I would be dead, dead or worse

Or worse, when you're seven, shouldn't make sense. 

The front door of the place is open for breathing

Air strolling in with the chill of some passing prophet 

I must admit, I invited something bad in once

With that painting that came out of me when I was nineteen

Of the man I'd seen from my window at 3AM

You refuse to look at the painting

You already know what he'll look like:

The crown of his head pinned up bare and yellow, his coat in tatters

Every man corrupted by every man's corrupting power

And you know, too, about the little apartment dweller who ran out after him

She stopped short wailing her solitary accusation

One arm extended straight to draw the eye 

It was someone else's line first. Not mine. Maybe Brunelleschi's.

You gaze over at me. You're tired. You want me to stop talking.

You already know no one turned

That he and I just soaked up her cries under the streetlamp 

From either side of the wall, then slept again

Spooky, isn't it?, I tease, but stop short

You're serious about not looking, about not telling

I wonder in silence who else you've met down there,

What they showed you, and if this means we got our wish

I think we did:

We're different now, stomachs full

That empty dish a threshold, fat and golden