AD&D
2 Minutes Read Time
As in accidental death and dismemberment,
as in the insurance policy the Idaho State
Journal took out on me, their newest paperboy,
including a number I could dial if I lost
a limb. I carried disaster like a rabbit’s foot.
Suppose a neighbor’s stray arrow took
out my eye, $5,000. Suppose Old Lady
Allsop tripped while mowing and her rogue
Toro chewed off my foot, $7,500.
What a leaky, blood-filled boy I was,
a walking accident worth tens of thousands.
Haunted by mishap, I trudged, tasting gore
in every sunset, picturing compound
fractures when I crossed the screaming road.
I threw smudgy bad news six days a week,
ads heavy as Sunday, with a secret cache
of rubber bands that would last till
Armageddon. And I did my own weird
math as I walked, bartering my body
for the untouched world. With my toe
I could buy a raging river, with my wrist
a mountain fat with elk. A rib for a waterfall,
an elbow for a lake. A crushed testicle,
wasn’t that enough pain to buy Yellowstone?
What a blessed horror I was, as I zombied
along, one minute dragging a bum leg,
the next swinging an arm I might lose
by dawn. And what moments I took in
through open drapes. A woman
shaving her poodle, a man trying on
his dead wife one curly headed wig at a time,
ecstatic sadness in shades of blond.
How does one calculate the price of grief?
Once I saw a mom feeding her adult son,
the size of a fifth grader, in a high chair.
He couldn’t speak or sit up or control
his palsied arms. It was growing dark.
The window sizzled like a painting.
I looked, tried not to look, looked anyway.
She knelt before him. If she was lucky,
she got every third bite into his smushy
mouth. Applesauce or yams, who knows?
He was hungry but in no hurry.
Trapped in twisted limbs, he’d pivot his head
as if a sparkly ghost floated just behind him
and he’d rather die than miss its shimmery
pull. I strained to see what he saw,
some silvery disturbance of air, then left
another fifty-cent paper at the front door.
Read more from Issue 20.1.
