Poetry by Bailey Merlin

               ​dailyinvention CC




Interim

He is sleeping by the traffic lights when police find him. 
The capture is dramatic: he is dirty, naked, so resistant
they must restrain him with a rope like a wayward bull,
hauling his body into an emergency room for cataloguing
and sedation; they will not let him leave, preserving him
in the white sepals of his hospital sheets.

Sitting at his side, we discover the world in travel sections
of last week’s paper, marveling at the edges of waterfalls
and learn how best to follow good sounds, not ghosts; 
he reaches for me: Please, I want to give you this truth. 
He squeezes tight, ochre eyes confessing:
Sometimes it’s water, luring me to the well, daring me 
to jump; sometimes it’s a drum––boom, boom, boom, 
follow me here. He touches my sternum, tapping 
for entry–fails and falls away to neuroleptic nest.

Oh no, he shakes his skull to disrupt the dust, tugging 
at the IV that feeds him to sleep, not there, but here, 
in my head. I can’t live there anymore. He is rheumy;
the medicated body a scaffolding for an actualized self.
His voice hoarse and sour: Each time I come home, 
my old life rejects me, and I become something new.


​

Bailey Merlin holds an MFA in fiction from Butler University. Her work has been published by Into the Void, Dime Show Review, Crack the Spine, The Indianapolis Review, among others. She recently released the spoken word/jazz hybrid album Bug Eyes with Shore Side Records. She lives and writes in Boston, MA.

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