Winterberries VII
My imagination keeps me away
from night. The slant of it.
The milky light doesn’t consider
these notes the feeling of a cello
swelling in a bathtub. Instead,
I try to eat all of the fallen snow
outside. Arctic air stings
the face and my throat sore
from the salt. My nose bled
out into the snow—a succession
of “I belong here” notes
as I stare into a tablespoon
reclining in the snow. Otherwise,
I’m whole and there’s logic
to memory, until there isn’t—
I live inside a cello. The surgery
changed my face. I believe
the strings protect me. My body
continued without its head.
The head said, “Fortitude has limits,
so our standards need to change.” This
is to say those strangling tumors, that
my body is a bundle of nerves, that
I no longer recognize my voice.
.
.
Winterberries XI
How much does sorrow influence
harmony anyway? The long version
doesn’t need to be told. A teacher
told me to not write poems
about the heart or to end them
with similes. The man inside
listening to the man outside
said, “testosterone gets a bad
rap,” —without it one would
expand and crash. I will need
to rub the controlled substance
on my shoulders. But back to
the surgical theater which could
be an office without windows.
The operating table, or was it a bed,
held me during the impromptu
echocardiogram. They recorded
all the ways. I kept the echo
at heart’s length, noticed all
the instruments that would be used
later to not only open, then
the fluorescent lights closed in on me.
.
.
Kevin McLellan is the author of: Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient), Tributary, Hemispheres, [box], and Round Trip. Kevin is also Duck Hunting with the Grammarian—his video, Dick will show in the Academy Award qualifying, 2021 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. https://kevmclellan.com/
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