By: Gordon Taylor
Estrangement Effect
Our world celebrates
action but my legs
are inert as neon
numb parallelogram
in front of filthy aquarium
in which captured clownfish
gasp near a melancholy
un-bubbling filter
and a slow-motion medusa
fake fuchsia anemone
barely waves
in weak tide
This is more than a bad day
furnace cracked
alarm shrieks
carbon monoxide
air is death
and an unasked question
keeps me from running
is this happening
I squint at glass
blurred from breath
unending denial
invisible smoke
this sadness
a cataract on morning
Hyperthymesia
Sunday night, washing
white oxford shirts
erasing flashbacks with parades
of not quite soothing
pop songs.
This time is different.
Starting gun detonating
in chest. A storm
wrung from cloud.
Wet threads pounding glass.
*
This time
was different
he had
a bottle
of Shiraz
for dinner
in morning
was confused
by toast
diabetic denial
Highway 62
hands shaking
as he turned
prehistoric
red Buick
suddenly
air bags
the cabin
filled
with smoke
I opened
the door
fell into
fireweed
called
ambulance
*
Doctor celluloid glasses
doctor digital Freud
you decided
the only way
I could be saved
was to tear me apart
with post trauma ideas
remake me
with a new drug
without mentioning birch
tree house landscapes
and the man
that took my pencils
followed me home
smashed the car
untied my shoes
threw me onto a pile
of my own sweaters
tumor of years
I couldn’t fully recall
veneered with silver
self-deprecating jokes
stolen from late
night talk shows
some boat
on the lake at the cottage
a stolen boat
that was a soup pot
pushed from the dock
when I was five
just to see
what might happen
*
At the Montreal Children’s Hospital
when I was five
the endocrinologist said
I might not reach normal height
we walked
between two buildings
through an echoing beige metal tunnel
for x-rays and blood tests
tissue samples the nurse threatened
to do twice if I didn’t shut up
*
Shut off
rain of lists
striping window
in case
of emergency
door unlocked
for paramedics
note with prescriptions
Doctor Freud’s
phone number
*
naked
falling
yet again
into fireweed
this time
is different
here
I go
drenched
infinities
of trying
to forget
you can’t trust
a man
I don’t even
trust
myself
breathing
seems
unrepeatable
a facsimile
of life
beginning
ending
now
black
holes
devour
light
as
does
panic
cascading
brass
alphabets
red velvet
pillows packed
with river
stones
shower
of fake
atomic bombs
exploding
accelerated
ticker tape
heart
Gordon Taylor (he/him) is a queer poet who walks an ever-swaying wire of technology, health care and poetry. His poems have appeared in Tickle Ace (now Defunct), Prairie Fire, Plenitude, The Bridport Arts Prize Anthology and is forthcoming in Months to Years and Five South.
Artist statement for "Estrangement Effect" & "Hyperthymesia":
Both poems are exploring related states of mind - the inertia of depression and panic. In Estrangement Effect, I was exploring depression and how it can paralyze us into denial and inaction, even when we long to move. This is posed against an actual scene of a carbon monoxide detector sounding in the speaker's home. In Hyperthymesia, the speaker is similarly frozen, but stuck in a loop of flashbacks of traumatic memories, each leading to the other in an increasingly breathless panic.
Comments