[He called from San Francisco, I was nursing the baby, he said I have]
       

He called from San Francisco, I was nursing the baby, he said I have
a lesion on my calf, it looks like a cigarette burn, this was early in the plague,
no cocktail, my basement apartment beset with wasps, the nest located
in the bathroom fan, then biting red ants, basement no place for a baby,
looking back that part was small potatoes, I was nursing again when
the Challenger blew up, they say the astronauts were alive until the cabin hit
the water, eyes open all the way down, you'd think my milk would have been
copious but it was not and yet I am an animal, from there it was neuropathy
in his feet, he hobbled, who'd once won the town tennis tournament, three
figures wearing black showed up at the end of his bed, and he went blind,
thought the answer was dime store reading glasses, his mind, gone, then his
body filled with ocean water though he was from a freshwater place, river,
stream, mucky inland lake, newts in the window wells, his parents were poor
but had scored a second-hand above-ground pool there behind the fruit stand.

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from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission