10/18/2019 Poetry by Jennifer Bradpiece Tim Vrtiska CC
Coffee Grounds In the I.C.U., ammonia amnesia eviscerates the familiar from memory's mechanisms. Machines dictate heartbeats, each pressed breath a countdown. Tubes are crossing guards ushering fluids in and toxins out. Gauze tape flags direct the sway between self and ether. The beat between the in and out grows longer, as self compresses into other. Whirring and bubbling eat at the linear measure of time until the beeping swallows the senses in the clean back kitchen of the soul: clanging anonymously behind the warm revelry of a full banquet hall. The symphony of being recedes into specific jobs, clean of their relational interdependence. Remembrance slides antiseptic off the mop, the spray, the corridors buzzing fluorescent. Yet in each sterile cell, the body insists. Its wastes flush and bubble even as the veins retreat. Even in this antiseptic cathedral with clean confessionals and chemical communions the smell of rotting resists erasure. In the end, it's the shock of coffee grounds that deafens the death scent: two hands setting out little cups of unlikely dirt. Used filters held in front of pastel smocks-- so elemental, so earthly-- placed on the nurses' desks next to buzzing phones, in the stock closets full of vacuum-sealed silver needles, and the side tables of each room. Like offerings, like votives, like forgotten marrow, some thing for memory to sieve through. What we’re Left with Sometimes Her last words His last look Last hospital visit Clay paw prints Worn gas mask Rented death bed Singed lace bra Cobalt bobbed wig Unsent birthday card Fifty stuffed bags for Goodwill Chipped nesting doll Reverse mortgage Adult diapers Old photographs of unknown faces Blue morphine Self-help books Broken lava lamp Private journal confession Long probates One thousand last cigarettes and one very last December Smiles of my Dead Lately, I find myself wearing the smiles of my dead. My laughter now floats atop theirs like small weights on weather balloons Someone in a room or in the phone shares something. And another, who is absent, takes over my expression. Cat’s crinkled nose, her pursed lips wrinkling 'round piercings, nostrils slightly flared. Mom’s staccato throaty notes, a tune we shared at times and one I coveted in days she secreted it away for her less intimate public. The warm melting Heather’s constant cool. When her smile broke, the temperature rose around her. Dad’s head back, his nearly silent chesty rasp rippling out, impish eyes sparkling. The laugh scored when I one up’d him with a terrible joke, or pretended to bristle at one of his own. This alchemy is no death mask. They are teaching me how to smile again. Jennifer Bradpiece was born and raised in the multifaceted muse, Los Angeles, California, where she still resides. Despite chronic pain and illness, she tries to collaborate as often as possible with multi-media artists on projects. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies, journals, and online zines, including Redactions, Mush Mum, and The Common Ground Review. She has poetry forthcoming in The Bacopa Literary Review and Moria, among others. Jennifer's manuscript, Lullabies for End Times will be released in early 2020 by Moon Tide Press. Comments are closed.
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