Kubler-Ross: A Preface

Noah Raizman

 
find me a new mythology and I will eat its gloves
right off the floor 

find me a letter from the great doctor
and I will smear his blood ink

			and we examine how pain is performed 	 

in the center of my circle: dismal, throbbing.
needle me again
   		try not to miss. 
   		I know my fate

 			social time has beginning and end, and a variable rate

in the spine of my open book—pick your letter.
press there. 
   		for now—a cry followed down
   		impacted

 			a pilgrimage, consuming
 

who now to honor
my body with purple hearts? seek 
   		a bawdy tale, free of anodyne until
   		sharp like forked tongue, it comes again—
   
   			a conversion

of psyche to substance
to bow down to it or before it, 
 		this being the end of 
   		the last act

			her spiritual crisis, an assault

witness: legitimate these emblems
a bruise not my own
   		its constancy takes its meaning: there is nothing
   		without, for a moment, hurt

 			a kind of desperate victory

give me a clear film, and I will rend my taut lungs
to cellulose pulp

give me silence, and I will bid up its price to
wax feathers and a melting sun.