by Ed Doerr
- You know how pain
- bleeds through time
- like ink on paper?
- A promise scrapes
- the scabs coffin-lidding
- the night so you might
- infect your wound
- with a great big
- gulp of sky.
- In the pantheon
- of stubborn stains,
- blood ranks right up there
- with red wine. That is:
- even falling to your knees
- to scrub it out,
- cheeks flushing
- with a pre-orgasmic heat,
- you don’t forget.
- The crime echoes
- like the shotgun blast
- of a front door slamming,
- the shriek of car tires
- self-immolating on asphalt:
- every time you look down
- your heart will still
- at the sight of nothing.
- The heart knows what physics
- refuses to explain: that nothing
- takes up more space
- than we have room to store it.
- A young man,
- you looked to rent.
- A twink tosses a glance
- through a swirling eddy
- of coffeehouse steam,
- a waitress compares you
- to the summer air
- the night she lost
- her virginity under the stars.
- To imbue shape into nothing,
- you have to feel the fear
- secreting out of you
- through these pin-pricks
- dotting your skin:
- a cave expelling
- its long-held breath.
- You hide from yourself
- like you grieve the dead.
- Why did no one mention
- that time looks almost
- exactly like a split lip?
- But when you reach out
- to touch the swell
- of its broken mouth,
- the only proof you have
- is a smudge of shadow coagulating
- on the tips of your fingers.
A self-professed Twitter obsessive (@AuthorEdDoerr), Ed is a teacher and the author of the poetry chapbook ‘Sauteing Spinach With My Aunt’ (Desert Willow Press, 2018) and the microchap “Eulogy For a Former Life” (Rinky Dink Press, 2018) . Other recent poems, essays, and fiction can be found most recently in publications like Water/Stone Review, Hippocampus Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, West Texas Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, One Teen Story, Little Somethings Press, Eunoia Review, and several more. For more, follow him on Facebook, read his TV blog (overstuffeddvr.com), and visit his website (eddoerr.com).