I.
Phone at the end
of the bed. Voice on the end
of the phone. At the end of the bed I sit down,
I am one eye of a whirlpool. Voice
with its phrases like
There’s been an
anaerobic event. I know. The aquatic
hug, the kelp around our ears, the voice filtering
through the surface: slow
music
thrown from the passenger’s side at
down a snowy mountain. I’ve lost
our family album. Of course my mother
needs me.
*
My legs, my legs, two lumbering
jackasses that just can’t get
the job done.
When looking straight ahead,
carrying a person feels almost the same
as dragging a body along
behind you.
But looking backwards—the empty
stretch of river trumps
the face
sliding across the concrete.
Stupider every time,
but smoother. Those easy iron locks, that
oiled machinery. The larded
sides of bread grow slippery
in hot hot hand.
The sound of the tiger
no longer behind us but
on top.
*
It’s not like I didn’t know
what was about to happen. It’s not like
I didn’t know that backyard,
that picnic blanket. What was about to
happen was
not unlike you.
Was typical.
The thing about recurring dreams is
*
Cat licking
a knuckle. Over and over. Cat
licking a knuckle. Joan Didion remembers
Hawking talked
about retrieving time from a black hole.
Fishing it out like a stellar
tiger at the
edge of
information is encoded in the
correlations between future and past
I stop, I think “tiger” is too
cliché but what isn’t and: I can’t change
the way I see it.
Who wouldn’t need a year
to beat the mirror
into muddling out a face. Striped
or bloody. Furred or gleaming. You are one
or the other. You are
one or the other. You
are one or the other.
NIGHTS I LET THE TIGER GET YOU © 2013 by Elizabeth Cantwell, reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Black Lawrence Press.
