by Sam Sax
it’s not i don’t not have a problem
nor is it my problem isn’t not me
neither is there anything in the meat
that denies us all this theater
but here in the keloid i remember
what pride i took in those four years
i believed in control & in substance
then i was a lady out amidst teething
in the bars’ crooked dentistry
i’d sip still water & become greater
than any man pulling fishes from stone
there beside the other dying
parishioners i was perfected, sober
as a judge in his grave haunting
the bars like a spirit as evenings
dragged open their pupils in the dark
i’d let any man talk dirty but none
take me home knowing we’d wake
different in the same bed, who am i
now i’ve returned to the well, unwell?
how sad & predictable it was a man
who brought me? after four years
i let him offer an exit wound
& climbed greedy through the soft tissue
grateful to have again found someone
else to blame—for a time addict
was my name, it fit like an orange life
jacket, now it is gone i am gone—
& who the hell is this new self
that’s come to fill my absence?
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