Color of Shock
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| shadows of the solar eclipse august 21, 2017 |
Color of Shock
After shutting my thumb
in the car door, and in the blind
pain that came straight
though, mindless, rocking it too
I stood with the key
to my release in my left hand
and I shook and I almost
dropped it in the snow.
On the road one car, another,
and I saw myself bent
over trying to get free
and barely reaching and one
thumb alone is all it takes
stuck in the frame and waiting
for the small click of letting
go to come. I couldn’t’ve pulled
it out, up to my knuckle like
it was and I made small talk
in my head: the obvious dumb
statements any shithead knows
to say. So sure it happened
that way and the tip of it
engorged and blue as rage I stroked
it day after day the way
after being raped a lady
will pull herself into the water
to wash and wash and wash
and want to go into herself
up to the elbow if she has to
to root out all that’s been
dumped there, every micro-
scopic seed, scoop after scoop
after scoop, each handful bigger
than the last until she’s turned
herself inside out and there’s nothing
left of the mark but a moan
she’s made entirely her own,
it’s nothing the untouched
in this way can identify and it sounds
like shame blame mother-
fucker I’m stuck with it I’ve gone
and locked myself in the frame
of this idling ride and the engine’s still
cycling through and I could be
here forever or until the gas
goes I could be here twenty seconds
or until every hump and hill is taken
and he’s on top and I’ve turned
my face away and take it I take it
and when I’m finally free of it, when
I’m as clean as I’ll ever be again
I’ll look at purple things like kin:
iris, lilac, oil slicks of rainbow paste
in the mud, the last color
I saw before I buckled, blind,
like the slam of a door, like trying
to beg free, like hearing the door
lock, like dropping the keys,
like bleeding into no-place
but thumbtips and fallopian tubes,
like touching the meat of me
to calm to calm, over and over
to calm.
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