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].