MARCO BAUER
Minor Cut in Grand Central Terminal
Please for a minute think coffee cup’s lid or newly-notarized passport
paper’s edge: flesh bead scalped from the side of the ring finger in Joe’s
Coffee; bloodstain swirling down Grand Central bathroom sink drain;
the same one NYC homeless man went twisting over, undulating, hot water
rushing. Mirror beaded with steam. Orange-capped needle capping the
syrup-reamed urinal. Then think Band-Aid on wet skin & UNKLE’s
Bloodstain (blue blood, blue blood, blue blood) & Metro North rumbling,
oh Metro North! Metro North, six dollars extra if the ticket is bought from
the conductor, you are the superior train line only when you are empty &
quiet & tired & chasing tracks & leaving the city. So lovely when
clubbed into submission like grapefruits beat through a cheesecloth. You can be
juice, sweet & thin, if you’d like. The cat-sized rats gnawing wire
& steel agree. The cat-sized rats say they’ve missed many sunrises to sleep.
That you should adorn honesty with disorder. That corporate communicators
work power over power & are vaguely sexual in nature. That Hayes is close
enough to haze and there might be a poem in it. That I deserve a fresh
Band-Aid and Neosporin & a glass of honeyed peppermint tea in a
hand-painted Regio Haan mug. Scratch that. Give me two or forty Advil.
Scratch that. Give me fifty or so Tylenol. Not quite. Give me that man’s
heart transplant. Give me poetry from a fruit about the birds. Give me
Black Grouse boxing in the Dolomites. Give me wooden Genghis Khan
statue carved into a dildo (It’s time to blow this fire out). I sometimes accept
that I am Plato’s poet. That if you tell me I must not be serious, I’ll tell you
how I’d rather crawl on all fours than untie two boots (you are alone?).
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Last night I wrote your eulogy...
Last night I wrote your eulogy to the sound of the sobs before the synths breathe out again in SAW VOL. II #3 & everything was rattled by the heels of polished leather shoes cracking on hardwood floors. Hey brother it’s morbid I know, you aren’t dead yet despite the stitches scarred under your scalp or the scars stitched through your knees. The gasping & the choking & then the tightening of your shoulders like hot iron jammed through your spine. Like the bend of a sapling snapping straight. Emergence, tectonic, continents, confidences, Atlas, alas, it’s always the everything with you. Always a hundred histories for every muscle in your back. Always the backs you do not let carry you. It’s true: I can see & hear your drums. Hey brother, you aren’t dead yet & I’ll only admit it when you are: the desperate thing. The cold spread of spider web under chest.
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Marco Bauer’s work has been published in Bruiser Magazine and Grotto Journal.