It’s an honor, every time, to have any literary magazine accept your work, and it’s an extra thrill when you place work suitable for a certain journal. I’m so happy to see my poetry appear, (for the second time; the first poem follows, below), in OU College of Medicine‘s 21st Edition of BLOOD & THUNDER: MUSINGS ON MEDICINE. This one, “Sustenance,” concerns the last day of my mother’s life, so…enough said — but having our family be there, bearing witness, meant everything to my mom, and us, and as I’ve written, helping someone die is the most difficult job you’ll ever love. Sending this one out to everyone who has stood by a loved one when it’s most necessary, and redemptory.
Sustenance
On the day my mother died we sat downstairs,
as an exhausted summer sun set, and had dinner—
which seems obscene, but was, in fact, exhilarating.
We’d been keeping a constant vigil for fourteen days,
and something you come to understand is that in order
to help someone die, it’s important to keep oneself alive.
Being able to eat at all a luxury, after weeks made up
of days without appetites; anxiety and sorrow destroying
everything having anything to do with desire or delight.
We sat as a family and ate, which was fine and wonderful
in its modest way: individuals who had missed the rhythms
of work, sleep, and meals—that life enjoyed by the oblivious.
We ate, consumed by the only thing we knew: being present
and fortifying ourselves for the important work of preventing
suffering as though our lives depended on it, which they did.
Earlier that afternoon we’d worked, in unison, to change
the sheets she had soiled; in silence like the kinds of insects
sharing one mind as they build safe places to shelter and thrive.
Humans, too, heed some primitive instinct to cultivate security
when everything is falling apart, all concerns reduced to survival:
we ate because we were alive; we ate because we needed to live.
(From February, 2022)
It’s a tremendous honor to have my work included in the current issue of The University of Oklahoma College of Medicine’s journal Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. It’s a gorgeous production, and I encourage anyone to check it out online, or support their work and purchase a physical copy. In addition to poetry, there is prose and visual art, it’s a lovingly and painstakingly produced project.
This poem, “My Uncle’s Garage,” is at once autobiographical and a creative point of departure that purposefully addresses a whole host of triggering issues: suicide, violence, abuse, adultery, depression, religion, and a thorny topic that inspires much of my fiction, the inability to communicate openly and honestly (and how many of our problems, societal and self-inflicted, might be ameliorated if we were able or willing to do so).
It’s heavy, disconsolate stuff, but it’s also an attempt to make sense of pains familiar to all of us, and I believe one purpose of art, beyond merely exploring the dark spaces, is to confront them, discuss them, and make small, individual (and hopefully, collective) strides toward transcending them.
This poem, like so much of my work, is dedicated to the memory of my wonderful mother, Linda Murphy.
My Uncle’s Garage
It’s a place where certain kinds of men go
to get away. Or rediscover some of the things
everyone doesn’t already know. A sanctum
some men feel most useful in, if they’re able
to make something new or fix something old
that somebody broke.
The same place some men might find themselves
feeling like incognito custodians: cleaning up
dirt or dead bugs, indifferent to the dark stains
left by cars; shuffling tools and trash cans; evading
projects unfinished or preempted by empty bottles
of beer or more serious business and clearing dusty
milk crates crammed with old cards and letters—
or else bags stuffed with secret notes not meant to be seen
by anyone other than the eye of the beholder,
whose schemes serve as beginnings and endings
at the same time.
(Another man? Or worse, another woman.)
This is the place, then, not the woods or anywhere else
an innocent bystander might stumble upon him which,
to his way of thinking, was a graver sin than the act itself.
So: a Sunday afternoon in late autumn, where for all
intense and purpose, it’s winter, earth primed like a host
planning a party.
(Here’s the thing about those awful things you can never see:
They don’t disappear—and stay suspended, forever in the air.)
It’s here he’ll be found, fingers interlocked, unbreakable.
Like the sometimes-sacred bond of family, or the audacity
of unwelcome memories. Yes, let her find him here, first.
Or his father, whose love was often like a fist: a fighter.
The kind of man certain sons shouldn’t want to become.
A last word, at last, in an unspoken war nobody wins.
This final failure a family affair, an uninterrupted argument
that’s run its course.
(Let him sort it out, his own way, with the only man
he feared, the man upstairs, the Big Daddy watching
each scenario unfold in the mess of His own garage.
Was it immaculate and organized inside, or a shambles
of spare parts and discarded plots? Alibis willed freely,
no fault of His own.)
It’s here they’ll find him, the place he finally found
an end, at last, to all the questions, and even the answers.
Peace this way, maybe—if the words he’d had beaten
into his brain were, in fact, written in stone—the first
day of the rest of his life, a second chance, freedom
from fathers and fear; already gone. Off to somewhere
where we don’t need to breathe or believe. All forgiven,
so you can forget whatever made you pray to get away
to begin with. Or not.
