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Notes from the Quadriplegic's Journal
In this diner, two metallic raisin flies curtsy on the lip
of a coffee mug, and when their waffle-lens vision
fills with hundreds of a man's swiping hand,
they are translated into the air--whisked away
as if by strings, escaping with a tale of death cheated
and a strengthened belief in Providence.
The man, for his part, lets his eyes take their fill
of the woman who just walked into the restaurant.
The cigarette in her hand is of his brand,
and he is one who believes in signs.
She sits and, trying not to think about work,
thumbs through the newspaper, wondering,
"Would implementing a flat tax now boost or crush the economy?"
He blushes and, trying not to stare at her,
thumbs out the onions from his hash browns, wondering,
"Would my old pick-up line now boost or crush my chances?"
She remembers that it is time she did a breast exam.
He imagines himself helping her with one.
Then she crosses her legs and he finds himself lost,
whirled in a world swooning with Pachelbel--
her ears catch a wisp of it
and she notices him, wonders,
"Would he consider two kids and a second mortgage
a head start or a call to retreat?"
Their veins hum with blood
and their blood hums with electricity,
until the cook begins to ladle ghosts into her soup bowl
from his pot of glue and fever,
and she tells herself that this blood-dance is imaginary.
She looks away, and he renounces his belief in signs.
This is how we barter catastrophes,
insure ourselves against one another.
I take in this scene with my waffle-lens vision,
my mind humming like metallic raisin flies.
Having learned in my own body something about ghosts,
I believe I know the difference between blood and imagination,
what it costs to disbelieve in signs.
I have learned what insurance will and will not cover,
that any policy is only worth its weight in risk,
and that love is never a deductible.
Wesley Biddy earned his B.A. and M.A. at Lee University, studying poetry for a brief stint at the Iowa Writers' Workshop between them. After completing a Th.M. at Duke Divinity School, he began his current degree program at Marquette University, a Ph.D. in Theology and Society. His poems have been published in Nantahala, The Pedestal, Wicked Alice, ken*again, Language and Culture, The New Pantagruel, and Communique. (December 2007)
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