Your Phone Call Published in the Blue Nib 2017 Anthology Honorable Mention in the 2017 Fall/Winter Blue Nib Chapbook Contest poetry the police probably know better than anyone that life and death are full of obligations
like how they must decide which parts of your car should be photographed from different angles
or
how they decide how tightly to cinch the cuffs around your wrists drunk with the pulse of whatever alcohol has numbed you
or
how they figure out how to comfort my papa in the presence of so much blood and in the absence of his wife who was a moment before
so essential so irrevocably indissoluble, so alive when they bring you coffee in that grey room next to the evidence room where tragedy reposes
where truth is defrauded and deceased do they wonder who made your eyes unseeing who fermented your humanity what erased you
pint by pint do they ask you what part of you lies drunk, dormant that her rings, her clothes, her scent sealed in a bag
for permanently expired things does not perish you instantly, vanish you does the sweat gathering at the nape of your neck yeasty and rank
hush you, drag you, chain you does your raging hangover squeeze your lungs empty burn adrenaline in your extremities when they offer you
your phone call inexorably scraping my soul exposed forever unalterable your story wails
in muted mutterings screaming in the distance a siren that I dream is not for me I am fooled with slumber when my phone call comes at 5 am with word that you killed my Nana