Poem for Sunday, December 27, 2015

Delirium Poem

I.

This time, the sweat leaks from curved pools
behind my knees, trickles down my

motionless legs. My legs are turning pale

in a foreign winter. My skin hasn’t breathed
in months. Now, I must run—

barefoot along the tracks, kissing steel,

wood, and rocks. I am the Union Pacific

cutting across America’s heart.

I pass the exact place where a young boy

fed up with life stood and waited for a train
to take him under.

They wrote about it in the newspaper the
next day. They never said the engineer’s eyes
turned into moons and then went white.

II.

In the woods, everything is asleep. The pines

are bark-stripped. I knew a girl like that once;

my legs are still pale, too.

I pull a locust skin from a branch, stare into
the amber eyes before I crush it into dust
and let the wind lift it from my palm.

There could be someone buried beneath my
sore feet. It is time to stop running.

Here is my routine when a fever breaks:
wash my face, take brightly colored pills,

wonder if my body has betrayed me or
the other way around. Still half-dazed,

I say to no one but myself,

“And you were there, and you, and you.”