Poetry by Birch Wiley
Windsor Locks, July
Someone left the front door open. It swings
into the lopsided house, slack-jawed.
I should make sure dad ate today
but instead walk past low roofs
built when this was a factory town.
Someone left a filling cabinet, a dresser,
a propane tank, a TV at the curb. Someone
else kicked the TV screen in. Teenage girls
pass on bicycles, spines rising under
their t-shirts, hair cut straight across
their backs. Make a list of things I miss
from home: ginkgo trees, good mud, big ugly
houses. Pass the postman who wears
a cowboy hat, enviable for his ease,
the neat place he fills in the landscape.
Walk past the tobacco barn, every other
board propped out to let wind through
until the hand-cut leaves are ready
to be shipped, ground, manufactured,
anonymized from plant to product.
Pass more anthills and auto shops,
anthills and auto shops, a Dunkin Donuts
sharing its parking lot with the Econolodge,
chain links’ resident flock of sparrows.
Pass lottery tickets and Game wrappers in sand.
Back at the house, dad will finish
work and we will spend an hour to two
cajoling our way through dinner and he
will fall asleep by eight with the TV
on, Antiques Roadshow at full volume, and
I won’t sleep tonight. While headlights roam
the ceiling and neighbors argue over
nothing, I will wait for morning.
I will think about the roadside objects,
the birds and blunt wraps and bugs,
the yellow-warm families behind windows,
the open door of a strange little house.
How I could have walked right into the dark.
I could have walked right through
into the quiet heart of someone else’s life.
Post Mortem
the summer after dad died
I ate little slept less reckoned
my own young-mortal body
his turned to sand stowed
in a mason jar two years
on a high shelf until finally
I bought an urn unbecoming
how I fled his dying deep
into the beds of strangers teeth
throbbed ulcer empty black
coffee burn sour candy
sugar ache menthol unquiet
grind manic dance the rest of
this body remembers
so little laundromats mostly
work shifts spent looking into
air hours awake some man
snored on a twin mattress
I waited for night to finish
its dark opening behind blinds
I could never make myself shut
Better Living Through Chemicals
Under the pills it all goes flat – a mind
like a minimalist interior – white
walls, round edges. Easy
to forget not everything sweet
is good: rot, gasoline, books
molding over, two week sheets
knotted at the foot of the bed. Life
sells us lost things as we lose them.
Maybe I do still wish I could die, so
I get off the bed and I put on jewelry
and I take a random book off the shelf,
carry it with me to a coffeeshop. I tell
my friends I love them, I miss them. I tip
the barista and smile with teeth. I talk
to strangers in line, try to remember
wanting everything, everything I have now.
I take my pills. I do what’s left: continue.
Birch Wiley is a transsexual writer living in New York. Their work can be found in Pleiades, Voicemail Poems, and Oscillations, among others. Their debut collection, Mythweaver, was published by new words {press}. You can learn more about them at birchwiley.com.
Arcturus 