Rungs Of Air

By: Richard Widerkehr

- after reading your email, You Are My High School Memory, I receive external beam radiation under a Calypso 4D Localization System

I can’t tell you much about this table—a scanner

shows the Calypso tech where to beam Xray slices.

You won’t glow, said the nurse. Just don’t go

through airport security. The margins of sunlight,

of stories? Your surgical margins negative,

that’s a plus. My mother said you had cat eyes,

a Day-Glo green almost feral, skittish. Our bodies

two refrigerators burning. Now I ask for daily magic,

a moth affixed to a screen door—your pixils

on my screen, surnames of thirst, full-body scans.

When I sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon”

for my mother, she said, Keep singing,

scanned windows for the black cat. The margins

down, the markets up, then crashing.

You were fire fascinated with itself:

More air, more air, you said. As for that sheen

of burning gasoline, your magic—

stones and stories, margins starry

and omniscient—you ran down the stairs.

Now a voice says, Stay still.

Calypso’s rasp and buzz. I cannot climb

these rungs of air. Linda’s the air I breathe.

Gentle and sweet you said I was.

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Richard Widerkehr’s fourth book of poems is Night Journey (Shanti Arts Press, 2022). At The Grace Cafe (Main Street Rag) came out in 2021. His work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Review, Writer’s Almanac, Atlanta Review, and over 50 others He won two Hop-wood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan and first prize for a short story at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. He has poems in the award-winning Take A Stand: Art Against Hate (Raven Chronicles); he reads poems for Shark Reef Review.