greatpoetry | D.A. Powell

[morning broke on my cabin inverted. tempest in my forehead] 

           The Poseidon Adventure (1972, Ronald Neame, dir.) 

morning broke on my cabin inverted. tempest in my forehead
fine kettle of fish, I'd tell myself, could I have pinpointed the date


marked SERO-CONVERSION in my pocket gregorian calendar. [a guess?
sometime between the day lady day died and the day lady di died]


my lymphocyte is no gillyflower. respiration no nightingale trilling in the dark
to those who hear crickets in sputum and the nightwind rasping in breath


I say: there is no positive in being positive. all that glitters is glitter


and so we have...                                         the climb:


first, think of all that can be jettisoned. cumbersome clothes for example
[always the one thing I'd think of doing without] when I was young


in borrowed 501s: had to have pants so someone could want to get in them
without boxers for weeks I could make do. not beyond wearing slinky panties


if the occasion arose. some drunk hetro plying me with schnapps: dress up, doll
what lies did he tell himself, biting his way down to that brass propeller shaft



also abandoned: retiring to miami [though I won't miss the guns or snakes]
or tel aviv [though I wouldn't miss the vipers. or the snipers]


dreams of a hot husband in a hot tub who'd complain “honey, I shrunk my kids”
and drink fresca all day & rub my feet. dreams of growing cantankerously old


shouting down the drainspout at a neighbor's brats. clipping my ruby begonias
haggling over the price of nectarines at the pick 'n pack 'n scrimp 'n save



but climbing always: as up the trellis and overshrouding the eaves, wisteria
spreads in clusters of carcinoma-colored bells. cascading epithelial light


up the spiral staircase of recombinant chromosomes. no one wants these genes
the double helix that swam through treacherous night: aching to be held again


you couldn't know the disaster this voyage has been. the shvimen, the shvitzen 
yard by yard the little deaths accrued [imagine your twin towers over and over and]


out: that glorious sky darkly hung with newspaper lanterns. scalpel-shaped chimes


—what am I meaning to tell in this cramped space? bubble suspended in glass—


the reckoning beyond this cargo hold. dear god, who hears the pounding on the hull



D.A. Powell
from Cocktails