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.
