Poetry by Joe Amaral

         Edgar Hudon CC



Moral Injury

At my aunt’s funeral, a cousin approached me.
Said her son just started working the ambulance
as an EMT. His first suicide call was last night.
He phoned his mom at 2:AM sobbing,
describing the situation in vivid detail:

the nylon rope denting the man’s neck--
his bulging, cartoonish eyeballs
and purpled cheeks.

I told her I’ve been a paramedic for thirteen years.
Sadly, I don’t have many firsts anymore.

But that’s not true.

I recently cut down a Mexican cowboy
hanging dead on an oak tree in full serape
and sombrero. Clad like an old soldier
in full regalia as dawn flamed over hillcrest.

It was like a summer painting. Morning light,
false promise of new beginnings.

I pull compassion out like a claim
when sent to witness. Or bluntly acknowledge
how fucked up something is without letting
my heart seize in coldness. This is how it goes.

What I see on the street is not a lie.

I am here to speak
for those whose eyes have frozen.

I am a floating rib, a punctured lung. And when
blunt force trauma impinges upon a person
toeing the boundary line of death
I don’t slink or run away. I breathe for him.

I try to fix him. I know I can fix him. Why can’t I fix him?

​

​
1ST
R
E
S
P
O
N
S
E

I nudged the gun off the nightstand,
hooking a finger to move it away
from the beaten woman. It was heavy
as dark thought. She had old, yellow
crescent moon bruises under both eyes-
a black one on her cheek fresh as soot.
A shotgun sat propped in the doorframe.
The kitchen a hoarder’s nest of dirty
bowls and bullet castings. Melted aluminum
in rigid globs poured all over the countertop
from a man who made his own                             ammunition
and liked to punch his wife. Dispatch sent
an ambulance and a fire truck. The scene was
unsafe. We called for police. Every shadow
in the hallway was her husband emerging
armed and dangerous. We stood the woman up,
belted her on the gurney, watching every entrance
and exit.                                                                             A single shot ripped out.
We ran down the driveway, yelling on our radios,
pushing the woman forward into the rig. Cops
arrived with blazing lights, encircling the trailer
as we fled across the street. The woman started
shaking her head, said he finally killed himself.
She was pretty stoic about it. Strong. Then she asked
if the ambulance ride cost anything. I have Medicaid,
she declared. I don’t really want to go to the hospital
but I guess I can’t go home neither. She sighed
then laughed. I don’t have any money, nada.
I told her not to worry about that now, let’s tend
to your injuries, get you the help you need.
She gave me a smile and a pat on the cheek.
I can’t wait to get the bill, she deadpanned.
I have insurance
but I know
nothing
in this country
is free.




Primal Media

File away
your preconceptions of me.
The stereotypes
I perpetuate
in imaginary tameness.

I will get upgraded,
leaving my bones
in a wireless heap
as water spurts
off my firewall.

I bleed you
like a heart surgeon
slicing into
the unclamped mystery
of vasculature.
                                                Freed.
I am utter instinct-
the unfenced coyote
regarding
the leashed dog
with sadness.

The wildflower
in the weed patch.

I shed my soul,
leaving cosmic traces of it
in seashells: anaerobic
echoes of magic.

I dip into your digital ocean.

A fearless shadow,
an ominous ripple--
a dorsal spike
of species unknown.

​

​
Entwinement

We have separate wings
made of the same nest, flying
opposite directions around this globe
until we meet along its roundness.

You weep at the corpse leaf,
the silver water that winters
on icicle and eave, in our wind-
blown house. Searching
the smooth muscle of memory
for a pinprick of blood welling--

the first place you lost me.

I think I will change, but,
I only regenerate- you hear echoes
from impassable slopes
and decide
it’s not worth the climb.

Days elide platitudes;
mist reveals and re-veils
as dawn-iced light
dimples the soil
in its never-ending creep.

I will thaw and begin trickling
down the mountain to feed the creek
where you hunch over hardened stones
slick with what we are unable to keep.

Afraid to swim, to separate,
we anchor ourselves together
still breathing
under all this crushing weight.

​

Bio: Joe Amaral works 48-hour shifts as a paramedic on the central coast of California. He loves spelunking outdoors, camping, traveling, and hosting foreign exchange students with his young family. Joe’s writing has appeared in awesome places like 3Elements Review, New Verse News, Panoply, Poets Reading the News, Postcard Poems and Prose, Rise Up Review and Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora. Joe won the 2014 Ingrid Reti Literary Award.

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