THE DESERTION OF NOUNS
First to go are the names
of fruit
and the people you haven’t loved.
The dental assistant who pats your shoulder
when the drill stops, the waitress whose smile
was broken by stroke, the mailman
with his tattoos and tramp of snow
in the late morning. Call him Karl,
Karl who you’ve seen in the produce aisle
talking to himself because he can’t remember
if it’s turnip or mustard greens
that the man he has loved for twenty one years
wants, the man he talks about on your porch
with uninterruptible speed but whose name
escapes you now like his illness, though you
recall its manifestation in spots,
in the gentling of memory. Spots
like the ones blooming beneath the tan
on your hands that you notice when
you take your uncle his omelet. For him
there is nothing so lucid as 10 am,
when the spills of breakfast settle
and a nephew returns with a tray of nouns
and a name just below his forehead.
Starts with a B. Even in the snarl of tissue
we call his brain you count one hundred
trillion synapses down which chemicals
still whip fibers and tear across cell divides—
one hundred trillion to lay down the jumpy tracks
of memory, nudge his blood, chill
what is left of terror, schedule sleep,
help him walk or shape a plan
to kill himself. Bird, he says, Ethel Merman,
with rope. The day I rubbed my friends
from the Memorial Wall. Pomegranate.
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