A Poem By Michael Comstock

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

2004

Those were the days
I was always on

Dramamine and sleeping
pills to edit

the afternoon and night.
Drawing on film

theory I thought a man
outlined in dots

like a this-could-be-
you portrait

in all the places
I was was watching

me, the man the
camera’s stand-in

sewing a whole
from a moment-

to-moment life.
There was no man,

there was no thread,
I had to think

though that there was
to not go piecemeal

on myself. I watched
community access

cable, took
a cough-blood

jog to a certain tree
lit by a certain arc

bulb and wept.
Things were not what

maybe I wanted
them to be.

My car caught
fire in a field.

It had to be
towed, I had to

ride in the tower
with a man with

one leg, one stump,
one wife, one fly

swatter. A red don’t-
walk hand cut

the night in half
each time it clapped.

I found vomit
exactly where

I left it
specked with

vending machine
cracker dust

and in the park one
day reporters

penned a man
wearing a cast

holding a government
check to a head

wound starting
to bleed, saying

I just don’t think
to give it

my all means getting
anywhere other than here.

Michael Comstock is a law student in Washington, DC.

Even kids with chicken pox love poems, which is why they know to go to The Poetry Section’s archive to get more of them. See also: kids who climb on rocks.

You may contact the editor at [email protected].