David Greenspan
He sits in a thin wicker chair by the bookcase
thumbs untitled spines mumbles about lack of sunlight
my body communicates via a series of twitches
medical textbooks don’t talk
we’re gluttonous with nostalgia for what might have been
he asks a question coughs asks another
I raise my right arm a calico cat speaks
ignorant collector of wheelchairs haunting is ordinary
consolidated mourning ask any creature
a fan hums at my uncovered feet
he tells a joke that begins with a professor walking into
capital’s bile taught me mental illness
heroin taught me everything else
he says both are fetish reproductions of violence puckered & devotional
a bar the joke begins a professor walks into a bar
grades their colleagues’ grades writes
about inorganic learning outcomes
he walks to my kitchen drinks a cold glass of water
poverty born again in my dream
I’m smoking an office bathroom somewhere likely Florida
you can’t take this decay I yell
he places a hand on my ankle
the origin of Monday is a funhouse mirror he explains
anyone who looks in sees themselves
red handed with medicine countless Diet Coke cans
what is hiding beneath this skin of delusion
pearled undeath poppy bulbs bursting
spoiled & bitter he bites into one as I wake
I wake pulling hair from my thigh
dotwork of grinning faces
David Greenspan is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serves as a Promotion Editor for Slope Editions. His poems have appeared, or will soon, in places like Blood Tree Literature, DIAGRAM, Elderly Magazine, The Southeast Review, The Sonora Review, and others.
