Half a Pill | A Poem
Half a Pill
The day woke up with a (*)
not a star, but a satellite.
We drove through New Mexico; yes
We saw the adobe cliff dwellings; no
You were leaving home; yes
Someone was running away; sure
Then you, my mother, told me, an (I),
while driving:
when I was in my twenties
I thought if there was a gun around
I might have held it toward myself
Then my mother, the you, said:
my sister also said, we think because of our mother; (I)
feared * and (I) held *
(I) interrupted * :
many people have that thought; sure
around dangerous objects; yes
My tongue dried like killing myself
had never come into my own before; no
not out of my mouth
my heart pushing against the seat belt
wrenching against my sternum
hips confined as a passenger
bruised at their points
How scared this makes me; yes
that I would need to silence the conversation
could not move the I out of the parentheses
the possibility of, not the act.
We drove through New Mexico; yes
from water to wash the echoes out
First published in Counterexample Poetics.
