Poetry By Trish Hopkinson

Jenavieve Marie CC



​
The Hospital Bed Floats 

suspended with stillness reserved 
for the dead. My son lies 
angled, head raised, paled
with no expression, no tension--
nothing to demonstrate the cranium 
fractured in three places, his swelling 
brain. Somehow

I contend with the sudden awareness--
a child unborn is a child who never dies.

his face unscathed. There is surveillance video 
& people who make an occupation 
of watching human beings 
destroyed on screen, 
not unlike the monitors bleating 
the vitals of my stilled son, who hours before
rode his bicycle across a city street.
Someone watches a replay as a pickup truck 
going forty-seven miles per hour 
strikes. My son

My thoughts halted by grace—only able to wait 
for results, for doctors, more forms, more 
coffee, for him to wake.

needs nothing but the bolt 
in his forehead measuring pressure, nothing but 
the IV delivering fluid, the circulation pumps 
& the breathing tube. None of which will answer him 
when he comes to. These machines
feed on him as he once fed from me, bound
by the unnatural—a man mending, summoned
to life by the green line of an electronic pulse.




​
Anniversary

Five years since you resurrected
halted fusion & supernova
burst in reverse—your protostar 
rebirth expanding into sequence
realigning patterns of bone & brain 
with mere flecks of hurt. 
 
Such linear constructs do nothing
for reliving—imagination forming
interstellar spin—the moment
nuclear turned neutron
& the call that came in 
near midnight.
 
You coast sidewalk curb
where intersection awaits 
vehicle & bicycle collision
beneath a red-faced stoplight. 
How many rotations to green
before you felt it—the urge not to go
 
or rather, found resolve to stay?
My maternal sense you must exist
—your fluorescence even when dim
not unlike the emerging sliver 
in the telescope you propped on the porch 
to view last summer’s moon eclipse.



​
Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and in western Colorado where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets and is a board member of the International Women's Writing Guild. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and The Penn Review; and her most recent book A Godless Ascends is forthcoming from Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.