2/1/2021 Poetry by Koss Jonny Hughes CC In Other Countries Max called me—her acquaintance’s son suicided in Canada—flew from the UK to do it. Her voice quivered as if suicide had never entered her head. Fact was she had thought it herself— with surgical scissors. She would later show me how she paused and wondered how deeply one could cut-- before what? And so, the magnitude of ending one’s own story tends to render a seismic chill in us living. I remember when my childhood friend Curtis drowned with his father in some Canadian rapids. Took forever to get his body back to the States. A body is a property once it is spent (sometimes even before). And with no goodbyes or a funeral, he remains alive in my dreams, only he is forever fourteen, trapped between here and dead. Because he doesn’t know he’s dead, he smiles through his big- ridged teeth and looks just like his last school photo, still, his sun-bleached hair swept to the side, standing in front of a fake blue sky. Six for (Postpartum) walled in by white towers clad in ice gowns strapped to a steel slab electrodes matted to hair she knows what mercy isn’t goals / scourge the body’s disease in repeated jolts her memory reduced to powder they called it healing their shocks to pneuma in all the ashy clippings everything becomes apartheid cost / memory gone / lost job / persecution the devil’s bullies come and go in their flimsy clothes and habits, pulling each stitch from her patched counterpane as she wraps each ruptured bit how to pay the landlord how to feed her children when every dollar’s spent she knows, she knows choice is not a bludgeoned spirit nor a body and what her body gave her has now too been plucked if only one could choose death just as god intended she travels to her mind’s ocean a beach before weeds corrupted land warm sand covers her body as sea expands into sky pebbles evaporate water she made her decision as the sun lit their burners Suicide Suit A life should leave deep tracks —Kay Ryan I still wear your suicide suit. It fits me like a Trojan. I have filled it. Expanded like a rubber lung. Erupting seams. Eating. No Julie Newmar Catwoman in this spandex. Meow. But yes indeed. Pussy still got teeth. When I wear it, I’m invisible. When I remove it, I’m still invisible. Comfort cuisine. Jesus-face pancakes. Grilled cheese. Dollar-truck stop sandwiches. One for me and one for you. I’ll keep you alive with food. Your friend said she wanted to hold a service, then didn’t answer my messages. The disappointments didn’t die with you Max. Shitfaced, I read you Kay Ryan in my yard while you listened from a jar on a shelf. Yes. Tracks. Max. The neighbors in the golf cart showed up. Conjoined evangelicals preaching through their TV-frame roll bar. If god can’t save them from queers the roll bar will. Safety in twos. In golf carts. Did you hear me? I picnicked you in the yard while I read to you in your suicide suit, while they judged our hare bare gay souls while the sky spilled black ink, as my styrene plate blew across the yard like a spaceship. She said she respected your (choice), a fiction, especially when it’s yours. Life is fiction, a play. Death is essay and messy. Your girlfriend who was not a girlfriend harassed me on Facebook and blamed me for your death. She told me you were coming to visit her. ( ) You did not die. I wear your suicide suit, inside, I’m invisible. Outside too it is cold. Who did you shoot your picture for? She said you were coming to see her. WTF. I only called her to be nice. We never actually met. I still wear your suicide suit. It fits me perfectly, although it’s a bit tight. One ear sags. The tail makes my ass itch. It’s been a year since you died. My yard is packed with weeds. Your lavender grows despite me. Despite you. Your tracks hatch around the plants in flattened trenches. Three talking cats showed up in my dream Plump and hunching, yet spry. I recalled I forgot to feed them—ever. They told me it was fine and not to worry. They understood forgiveness is what makes us human ( ). They had mice and food from the neighbors, they said. Like what food? I asked. Like heads Of mice. And everything they loved that was mice. We stepped out the door to view the delivery gift basket; I tried not to judge the mice parts or smell cat breath, all of which they were pleased with. They were happy in a way only cats could be. Happy with what the world gave them in or out of a dark wicker basket. Happy with their catness. Back inside, human guests knocked at the door; cats fanned out, two on the sills, one on the couch top, content, not saying a word. Find work by Koss in Hobart, Cincinnati Review, Spillway, Diode Poetry, Five Points, Outlook Springs, Lumiere Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and many others. She also has work in or forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2020, a Diode anthology, and Kissing Dynamite’s Punk Anthology. Her book, One for Sorrow, is due out in early 2021 from Negative Capability Press. Find her on Twitter @Koss51209969 or http://koss-works.com. Comments are closed.
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