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The Cubicle
The cubicle has three bleached walls,
a cold, blank floor, and a curtain
that shrieks like a banshee under the axe
the minute a victim is bared to the light.
What ought to be colored is not.
The hospital gown strikes our eyes
as cellophane on ugliness.
Olding's given negligée
bought only by desperate hands.
A nurse taps your wrist
to bring up a vein, which
of course is hiding in fear.
A puppy to pet, a pencil to drum,
a drink to caress -- some toy
would distract us from thirst.
I worry the scalpel will slip.
When they roll you away,
part of me pulls invisible ropes.
I twist in a chair like paperclips
to pass the unpassable hour.
The right bend and a firm wish
might be the savior you need
for the spine stem drooping
as water turns black.
A Tuesday sky of sapphire blue
paled only by drifting clouds
would rescue our grief in better times.
But sunlight is a drunken lamp.
I go back to the room
where people dress in their fears,
plant feet on a carpet
as if a parade will start if they ask.
I should have brought something to knit,
some project that knots this dwindling yarn.
**first published in _Ariga_ (Israel)
Drying Paint
In that time swatch
between sunset, moonrise,
starfish glitter on black,
the earth sits like a hangnail.
I wait for a key
to turn in the door.
Hours alone work up
to the us in a half-assed way --
for love is a mission
that counts its dead,
then regrets the oversight.
Did I finish the painting
I wanted to hang
on our very last wall
when my kiss saluted your lips.
The easel won't stay on three legs.
The palette won't be eternally moist.
**first published in _Ariga_ (Israel)
The Cellophane Gown
A shoulder's valley tempts my chin.
But this is a clinic and clinics are cold.
Flesh, at best, a fading scarf.
Pain is just a menu choice,
a checkmark on a common form.
I'm broken as slivers of glass
in this cellophane gown.
A mattress in the going state
with wires poking through the cloth.
No whistle is left in my pulse.
Bored with the font of this grief,
a pelvis map of sorry lines
turned fissures widened by each step
I drink like addicts gulp a beer.
The open back invites an artificial breeze.
The nauseating headline news
above gray X-rays crackling
as fingers shift from clip to clip --
"Perhaps it's time for the chair."
You say it from two pedestals
of working legs --
the length of which make forests
worth the wandering.
And I withdraw -- fetal style --
grabbing for a robe of strength
that hangs in someone else's room.
**first published in _Ariga_ (Israel)
Broken Notes
A step is a curse,
an all-night toothache
lighting an intricate web of nerves.
Crutches lean by the bed.
I’d pitch them over a rail
from sixteen stories up
if the bottom weren’t here
just staring at me
like a pile of dirty sheets.
I bend in darkness
to fish for a lost shoe.
When the doorbell rings,
I feign sleep to save your eyes
from receiving my rusted walk
like a plate of stinking shrimp.
My sad lids down, birthmarks
on unchangeable stone.
Au jus, old age in livid
early lightening bolts
runs through my blood.
The whistle is gone from my pulse.
As any loving father would,
you wish for blindness,
deafness to the brittle moan.
This is the stage where the ladybug
clings to the flower
or drops to its death, wingless.
No Monet’s, no sharp Gaugin’s --
no valleys of consoling shoulders
full of lilies and lavender bulbs.
Merely a set of broken notes
in a dusty penny jar
on the near edge of a quivering shelf.
**first published in _Niederngasse_ (Zurich, Switzerland)
Yellow Tape
Each step I took on hardwood floors
was crushing cups of Styrofoam.
You lay in bed --
a catfish slapped on countertops --
sliding from thrust. I wanted reverse.
The flat cold fact of death was there
lining the summer with snow.
The hospice nurse sat knowingly,
knitting needles clicking
back and forth like swords.
I shot yeast in pita bread while you
touched Braille around a grave
as if you were spinning the clay of a pot
years had been aching to form.
No matter the dents in my knees,
no matter the bellowing prayer,
the book, this book was meant to close.
I brushed your hair, out came clumps
like triple tissues from a box
I didn't mean to battle with.
Death could be a melody.
I should have drawn that last long bath,
dried arrows of your shoulder blades.
If only I had run to you
with open scissors in my hands,
I could have cut the yellow tape
around a scene of loneliness.
***
bio: Five years ago, Janet Buck gave up teaching and picked up a pen. Her checkbook regrets the decision, but her heart doesn't. On good days her poetry can be seen floating around the web; on bad days, she's on the cover of Orthopedic & Fracture Magazine.
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