All About Flash
       

I'm all about flash, the way
it praises the whites of my eyes
stereoblind, dumb, and musical like cardigan
narcotics or warehouse garbage: remembering
is just like that now—so much water in my
mask, that one symmetrical darkness. There is
no not-lightning. Here are the collarbones
the pinks the studies for hands. Here we
are blowi ng through the wi nd's bloomers
electric with sugary nerve pain . Moving
day, blistering North Georgia of 1990: we are
posing in front of the moving
truck and my mother—that still bird
headed shaman with cordless phone—she has
her hand on my shoulder because she knows
I am already fleeing the scene: flash, and its perfect
brown corners. I blur out the right edge and into
the neighborhood, my only exit. If you are afraid
to go on, you can leave too. Here is the emergency
exit, hissing in that Port Authority star-scraped way, now
go.

I say if you are feral, stay
feral. Everything else is a missed epiphany. The sh ine
of things has a way of talking and it says here is how
you get out of your stoogey little life, all because
I took elocution lessons from a fire
alarm, which is another light switch
for my room has a deck that I sometimes
confuse for an exit. Even my th ighs make a triangle
of light. Imagine it's prom. No, imagine
we are a registered trademark. Imagine we are
the comeback smokers in a park surrounded
by professional baby photographers . It's high
flamingo noon and I am writing
letters to my student loan officer. Sorry
I am saying: I am not in right now. I'm so far
out I am an actual roughhousing. I am
on a wrestling team with deep dark
medicine sleep and the unsuffering void. No
I wil l not be in later. I plan on staying out
forever and under everything
the pilot light is out too.

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Copyright © 2016 Rachael Katz All rights reserved
from Ninth Letter
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission