Another Poem For Your Consideration – Chloe Wheeler

September 10, 2024

Jesus taped up at the bow of your bed, 
torn from a pamphlet detailing 
the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.  
a reminder for you to pray often. 
the mussels were lukewarm
in tomato sauce. broth. seafood 
got us feeling sanctimonious. 
we slept the unsettled sleep,
but still i sucked your stale
tongue in the morning. 

eventide events streak out 
like cellulitis. verging on sepsis. 
holding frozen peas to his face
in the aftermath my father hissed, 
he’s fucking dead to me. i lost my son. 
a whole happy home of victims. 
complex complexes coalescing. 
i left with a backpack full of things,
but no actual substance. a bikini top
that doesn’t fit. a bottle of Bordeaux. 
8 packs of Spanish cigarettes. face wipes.

real death is a dull ache. a hollow thud. 
handful of soil. absence. certitude. 
these living deaths are drawn out lacerations, 
dragging the razor end with pressure, and precision. 

when i was 8 i thought my father had died. 
he was face down in the basement.
daddy dead in the basement. 
the next morning he was eating 
a bowl of Special K for breakfast, 
drinking espresso w/ sallow yellow skin. 
this was how i learned alcoholics are immortal. 

there’s nothing worse than a dry drunk, 
except maybe a wet drunk, or a drunk 
that gets you wet bc he thinks it’s funny 
to pour a bottle of water on your head,
or piss the bed, or play with his piss, 
or throw a glass at your brother. 

this isn’t a AlAnon Meeting posed a poem. 
I’m not venting, or venerating myself 
with prosody. I’m just watching cars pass 
from the bench at the dilapidated gazebo 
3 minutes from that house. the old home. 
gazebo that was the cheap escape 
from a havocked adolescence.
when Devlin did too much ketamine.
and I pissed in the snow bc I couldn’t go home.
back to the old house. where once 
I tracked a few small kids size 2 
boot prints of fresh January snow
into the living room. 

later perched on the roof shivering,
watching swirling squalls
assume angry faces. 

wet snow. in perfect little old house. 
pristine filthy decrepit little old house. 
where mildew webs the mirrors. 
lead in the pain. I mean paint. 
asbestos too, in the shingles. 
thing is, asbestos only poses a risk
if the shingles are disturbed. 
only then are the particles released. 

the two bottles of Chardonnay 
were only potential energy balled up in a fist. 
it was the first punch that was kinetic.