There is a corridor that has escaped
and is out and is cold
and is overlooking Clarkson avenue.
That much I know for sure.
Because I turned
the cold brass ****
of the cold steel door,
heard the wind bellowing
obscenities as it absconded
berserkly. (I think
the other way.)
And also
walked through.
My mother’s voice has been
droned out by electronic
waves tentacling the immediate
space around me, around her,
and everywhere in between.
She sounds like a strange
robot, made-up. By me?
By God? It doesn’t matter.
Because that is
what is heard now.
That voice telling me with
the tragic kindness of
a mother
that I’ve forgotten
to call her, and my
dad, and my
sister,
and how come, have I
been busy?
How is life treating you?
Pretty good, I say. What’s
new? Nothing. Well then
what’s pretty good
about it, she says.
I laugh, she laughs too,
and I laugh again, inside though,
differently.
Slowly, our voices
wind down and we say
quiet goodbyes so that
I feel ice
about to rush to my
nose, it’s tentative, it
stops, and I
hang up the phone.
I am on the 6th floor of
a sick house, a hospital,
where some are healed,
some die, and others
stay sick. On the
ground, hundreds of feet
down and away
there are people I think, they
look so
small. An obese
mother, probably with
diabetes or hypertension or
heart disease or all of it
together, pushing her
baby in a carriage. A
smoker alone smoking
away something I’m
glad I don’t know and
other people just walking,
moving, like small living
things and then
I look down, closer,
at my own hands growing.
They can be
so large
when they move to
slowly cover
eyes.
