I Try So Hard Not to Bite Off His Tongue & One Poem
I Try So Hard Not To Bite Off His Tongue
Summer. Bridgeport Park.
There are two. Jill, my pelo chino pup & Sam,
a user-friendly pug. A perfect mix of rug
& hearth, innocent/not yet marked. There are
no boundaries. Downhill, a man, grey hair
stretching towards his ass asks about the
Camino. Canceled, I say, as if six months
of training had been an escape, not a launching
pad. There were three, lost in a chasm between
birth & death. One who feared the process of
living. One who feared the process of dying &
one who feared nothing, until a scan showed
tumors lurking in her lungs. It’s hard to move
your feet when they extinguish your breath.
& now with words that quake with guilt,
I admit, I’m a woman that welcomes an exit.
I know it could be different. Many pilgrims trek
the path alone. But I’ve never been good in a
quiet lonely space where the only hope for change
is to look inward. I’ll head to Rosarito, a village
at the water’s edge. Like a storm drifting through
L.A. I have mastered the act of disappearing. Jill
is pulling on her lead when I hear him behind me.
“Mexico is a shithole.” I shake my head in disbelief
but he just can’t let it go. Talks about his daughter,
some Carnival cruise that stopped in Ensenada,
how he wouldn’t let her leave the port. I want
to talk food, fresh fish & ceviche. How they taste
of sea & smoke. Or the time we celebrated harvest
in the Valle de Guadalupe. Sipping a glass of crisp
Chenin Blanc, we watched the hills turn orange
with the setting sun. I want to talk about family,
how love & acceptance found me on the sands
of Playa Encantada after my own blood locked
the door. Or the kids. There are four that message
me in Spanish. Te Amo, Abuelita. I turn away
while he mutters about dirty border towns, drugs,
crime, all the problems in his world. Then I unclip
Jill’s leash. Watch her run ten steps in front of fear.
Like A Bobcat Watching A Squirrel
My days are made of moments,
waiting for sleeping cells
to rouse their dormant friends.
To be honest, some days I want
to stay in bed. Some days I want
to end it all. My terms. My way.
The doctors slice hope like cake
force-fed to newlyweds. I remember
when we were young, drunk, happy
on the dance floor. The Clash “Should
I Stay Or Should I Go” blasting
on the radio. We believed our lives
would rock forever. That love would
save us from emptiness. Yet here I
am alone in the midst of aging, having
been poisoned, cut & burned. A cure
for cancer, they say. You cannot
conceal a weapon in a shattered vase.
Isn’t it ironic how life betrays. From
dance floors to dying. Like an
incendiary device waiting to destroy
a shared airway, this week’s scan is in.
Fear has a way of slowing down time.
The last time I wept, watching your body
pulled from the wreckage of a plane.
Like a bobcat watching a squirrel,
hunting for death in relentless sunlight.
Sheree La Puma is a writer and recent cancer survivor whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Lake Effect: An International Literary Journal, The Penn Review, Redivider, Sugar House Review, The Maine Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, London Reader, The Lascaux Review, Salt Hill Literary Journal, Stand Magazine, Rust + Moth, Mantis, and Catamaran Literary Reader, among others. She earned her MFA in writing from CalArts. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of The Net and four Pushcarts. A reader for the Orange Blossom Review, her latest chapbook, Broken: Do Not Use, is currently available at Main Street Rag Publishing.
