Poetry By Lisa McAllister

         Thomas CC




Everything’s broken

Grief sits at my dinner table every night and gorges on
stirfry and tacos and roasted potatoes
grief plays on the radio
every song
jazz and country
rock and roll most of all
Dylan and Louis Jordan and Little Richard
and the Ramones
I don’t switch it off
because that might make you retreat
or haunt someone else
but maybe that’s not how it works
maybe you stay around because I’m broken
maybe you’re trying to help maybe
you’re waiting to see
if I can pull it together
enough to mend what’s broken
I’d like to think you still have faith in me
still think (if you are capable of thought)
that if anyone can fix this, I can.
But this is unfixable
this thing is totaled
run off the rails
and if there is a “next”
                                            if there is an “after”
it will still have a huge gash, a crack
as deep and as dark as 4 AM
as deep as love
as dark as time
a new thing
developed out of shattered pieces
created from love and despair
maybe I’ll give it a name so it doesn’t feel bad
the poor misshapen lump
the freaky thing that crawls onto my lap
maybe I’ll feed it roasted potatoes and pet it sometimes
maybe it will turn its blind eyes to me
with something like love
like grace.
 
 



Contagious

It’s not contagious--
my dead son
won’t
corrupt your living children
your doe-eyed babies
my grief can’t wrap
itself around your perfect family
like invasive ivy
and pull you apart at the seams
the loss of mine
can’t twist its way in
to kick your door down
the damage is already done
and I am living proof that
no matter how much you want to die
your lungs keep filling with air
your legs keep walking
your heart, although missing and reported lost,
still continues to beat
even when you wish it would stop.
 
 



Until the End

I do not fear death
not anymore--
I fear boredom
without constant distraction
thoughts run amok
to places I don’t want to go
and I fear sleeplessness
night churning around me
stomach dissolving insomnia pills
into uselessness
and the way the light creeps around my bedroom
while Dad and dog snore
and I fear conflict
and anger and harsh words
but also unexpected kindnesses
both assaults that I don’t know what to do with.
 
I fear music--
every new song on the radio
a body blow to absorb
a memory bomb
that ticks while I fumble with the button
trying to find something innocuous.
But that doesn’t work either
because you always were the car DJ,
the music nazi,
clicking George Michael and Donna Summer off within one note,
giving me a look, a sigh.
 
I don’t fear death
but I fear old age’s
gentle onslaught of forgetfulness
and if I forget you--
who will remember the feel of your four-year-old hand
and who will keep the secrets only I know
the baby secrets the boy secrets
the buzz of you.
 
I’m a coward who wants it to be easy
go to sleep and not wake up
the way the gruesome little kid prayer says--
if I die before I wake--
but the broken pieces of me lay scattered
across Route 66
and there’s no one left to wear the glasses
that came in the mail on Friday
and who will remember Monday is garbage day
and who will fill out the paperwork
and who will remember Will’s shoe size
and Dad’s blood type
and what side the gas tank is on
 
And so the fear is life
and breath
and putting one foot in front of the other
it tastes like your favorite foods
the ones you’ll never eat again
it sounds like the Muddy Waters, the MC5 and
Dad screaming
in the backyard at 2am
it smells like candle wax, lilacs and musty old Converse
 
Fear lives here now
taunting us from the shadows
pokes us and jeers and teases us
we set a place for it at the table
we welcome it in every night
beg it to leave in the morning
 
I don’t fear death
but I do fear life
a life like this
going on like this
until the end.
​


Lisa McAllister is a poet and a mother. She lives in Grand Rapids, MI.