A Bloodletting

by Ed Doerr

  3. You know how pain
  4. bleeds through time
  5. like ink on paper?
  6. A promise scrapes
  7. the scabs coffin-lidding
  8. the night so you might
  9. infect your wound
  10. with a great big
  11. gulp of sky.
  1. In the pantheon
  2. of stubborn stains,
  3. blood ranks right up there
  4. with red wine. That is:
  5. even falling to your knees
  6. to scrub it out,
  7. cheeks flushing
  8. with a pre-orgasmic heat,
  9. you don’t forget.
  10. The crime echoes
  11. like the shotgun blast
  12. of a front door slamming,
  13. the shriek of car tires
  14. self-immolating on asphalt:
  15. every time you look down
  16. your heart will still
  17. at the sight of nothing.
  19. The heart knows what physics
  20. refuses to explain: that nothing
  21. takes up more space
  22. than we have room to store it.
  23. A young man,
  24. you looked to rent.
  25. A twink tosses a glance
  26. through a swirling eddy
  27. of coffeehouse steam,
  28. a waitress compares you
  29. to the summer air
  30. the night she lost
  31. her virginity under the stars.
  32. To imbue shape into nothing,
  33. you have to feel the fear
  1. secreting out of you
  2. through these pin-pricks
  3. dotting your skin:
  4. a cave expelling
  5. its long-held breath.
  7. You hide from yourself
  8. like you grieve the dead.
  9. Why did no one mention
  10. that time looks almost
  11. exactly like a split lip?
  12. But when you reach out
  13. to touch the swell
  14. of its broken mouth,
  15. the only proof you have
  16. is a smudge of shadow coagulating
  17. 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).