call Grandma to
open the door on dark
the desert mystery
in her day they never ran out of equipment
everything was reusable
now they use cheap plastic crap
why'd they make that switch anyway?
we wouldn't be in this mess
she had a shift running bedpans
and sharps through the autoclave
I'd dip the gloves in germicide
and line them up on this rack
wrap up a bundle of thermometers and
shake them in disinfectant
the metal hypodermic needles
could be sanitized too
you filled them from vials
with rubber stoppers
she slips into a memory
of walking in on a fellow nurse
injecting morphine in the bathroom
she had been refilling the vials
with sterile water
the hospital tried to cover it up
put her up in a room on another floor
with a regimen to ween her off
I went in to administer her dose
she had all the lights off and said
"no no don't turn them on, just
use a flashlight or something"
the dark
then Uncle Henry
sneaking out of the house
she drops the image of
the open window
curtains blowing
d-a-r-k
d-a-r-k
dark
dark
dark
slides into another story
of Mom conning her out of some cash
a feast's worth of groceries
for a fake party
she slipped out to pick up
an imaginary implement
and didn't come back
5 o'clock
6 o'clock
7 o'clock
and she wasn't home
no guests either
the sun was setting
I called the cops
they couldn't do anything
but tell me there hadn't been
any accidents on the highway
d
a
r
k
in bed fading
after the chapter on Palestine
....apartheid... a convo......
our Palestinian boss at the restaurant
...sandy stone walls &Kayla
Passover
the hanging gardens of Haifa
bombs over busses
dropping my book
a classic storm at midnight
cymbals crash in the alley
white light
then I'm in a wet city
like New Orleans
where you ride an elevated train along the waterfront
called "Aldonius Avenue"
painted tugboats and scrappy houses
bobbing
heavy plaster columns
with decorative yellow and green dragons swirling up their trunks
coming slanted out of the canal
fallen by design
we ride to the southernmost tip of town
a ferry depot
grand like an opera house in the mist
