ADIE STECKEL
CONJUNCTION
as if a syringe
drawing estrogen
from the urine of a pregnant mare
nostrils flaring, blood
flowing into the gap
as if cutting back the shrub
to see who could see back
as if turned over shoulder
riding along a long moon
wax spent ahead wane
done day’s debt begun
as if the colt with mother
when you became one
I was torn from the earth
and hung
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*** ** ***
CHERRY HILL
I can’t remember the name
of the French restaurant
and my dad can’t remember
the address
on the hill
I was born
where the surgeon
fell asleep in his car
on Cherry Hill
my sister died.
The nurses are quitting now
the ones who don’t believe
in science anyway.
The teachers too
and the public is falling
apart that never was
together
October is falling
all over
the car
all over
the sleeping surgeon
his sandwich
getting stale
on the table.
I want the egg sandwich
from the French restaurant
but I don’t know the name
or the street
and my dad doesn’t know the time
or my name
he calls me
by his own shame
and he doesn’t know
the names
of my sisters
or their due dates
and having children
is irresponsible
anyway he says
now the surgeon general
has issued his warning.
My dad’s father
was an addict
pharmacist and
there was a violence
in the home
when we drove by it
the screen door
kept swinging open and slamming
shut on the street
where my dad tried to make it
to the Major Leagues
before he became a specialist in addiction
solving the problem of his father
over
and over.
We lived on the hill with
the hospital and he worked
where my sister died
he played softball in the evenings
the fields are turf now
and the Hendrix house
demolished
on the windshield the Space
Needle plays its song
still raining
still dreaming
still the same dream
of slight return and
what angel
if you called out
would listen to this song
of the surgeon’s work
on a body that will die
on a species that will perish
in a world of medical
terror and plastic
band-aids that are not made
to stick
but to sell
and any angel
could save us
but there aren’t any
so what
new ways of being
might these words open
instead?
The rain is pouring
now I step
into Elliott Bay to pick up
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
trying to remember
something of it
I remember not
understanding the words
nuclear
radiation
leukemia
I understood
that I was ashamed
my mother died
the cranes came rolling
and I knew
they were a reference to something
about death
I didn’t understand
but I did understand
that I was
missing
something
the surgeon said
we make a straight
line like this
to indicate
masculine
we move the nipples
outwards
like this
like this
as if
he could show me
with his fingers
what is masculine
I didn’t want.
When I walk on Cherry Hill
there is no distance
between the breath
I draw
and the breath you
lost the poem
is the breath
total relation
I tossed you
as shards into Alki
an acceptable pollution
the gyres cycle
around the Pacific parts of
you in Hiroshima
and back to Manzanita
you might be a blue
heron or in
the stomach of an albatross.
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*** ** ***
THE WINGS OF AUGURY
thought the stork a crane
maybe gull with
snakes in mouth, twins two
daughters split wood
thought the king
fisher a gunman with
belt of bullets
glottal gl-
round throat
when I spoke
thought one of these
moons a feather one
falcon’s eyes seeled
another’s head leather-masked
my father, with a soft line
down his forehead, called it
the mystery of life
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ADIE STECKEL
Adie B. Steckel lives in Portland, Oregon, where they co-edit the small press and literary record label Fonograf Editions and work for an HIV/AIDS & LGBTQ+ health and social services organization. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Action Spectacle, Annulet: A Journal of Poetics, Dream Pop Press, Full Stop, Old Pal Magazine, Tagvverk, Variable West, and elsewhere.
To download a printable PDF version of this page, click here.
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A Dozen Nothing 