Sleep Study

Sleep Study

        Marisol informs me that I stop breathing during sleep
throwing the lungs into a fit

the riotous bleating of life pulling at life
awakens her, frightens her

        I say it happens in my roused hours, too
when the stars are present even if difficult to see

the negative scene oxygenates my brain

when the inanimate parts the surgeons placed in me
singe the air with ache and disconnection

and the inward stare forgets to respire

when a poem I read thumps the wind from me
and like the printed page

its transmission requires no breath

        she feels the need to nudge me
back into being

away from the precipice of
drowning in dreams

she’d like someone to drink her morning coffee with

        I think my reptilian brain has never quite worked properly
survival eyes and rote movements couldn’t ever fully be trusted

instinct without thought in a world this alive

I like how the light fades slowly
from my closed eyes

forms a green darkness
from concentric stars only I can see

how the moment hypothesizes itself
stitches together a blank quire

how it risks meaning nothing

        Marisol knows the limits of breath
how there’s only so much outcome in our effort

she remembers the tube down my throat

        the nineteen hours of surgery
that did not exist for me until they were gone

        I tell her it’s taken me the last hundred and fifty years of human history
to find my voice

somewhere between "you’d be dead if not for"
and "sorry for not meaning to say"

not yet a storm, just a depression

that I submit to historicity
in a way that ensures our mutual misunderstanding

how all things move glacially, even my teeth

blessed are the well-armed
the sound of hearts opening and closing

 

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Art Information

• “Portlandish Lights” © Nelson Lowhim; used by permission.