Apr/May 2019 Poetry Special Feature |
Excerpted imagery from photography by Kris Saknussemm
EMT: Ambulance Bed in Winter (With Each Line's Final Word from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Bed in Summer")
It's not really a bed but we'll take anything at night,
a gurney, whatever, relaxing after a fire caused by candle-light.
The last ten before all caused by cigarettes. The fastest wayto die is smoking, especially if the mattress catches fire, the day
spent dying, our day spent chasing after those who now can't see,
can't walk, can't hear, can't talk, can't believe that a goddamn treehad to be on the side of the road, hit head-on, their feet
cut off, left in the car, and then we dissolve to another street,
panning the camera, the cinematography of death, and youcome with us, to visit the well filled with the unwell, its blue
water turned red, the drowning, and now the present, where we play
bad classic rock, softly, trying to sleep before night is straggled by day.