A Poem by Dani Couture

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

I Come Around With Appetite to Parties

An evening carousel of who died, which
winds ribboned down, and the difference
between something bruised or broken.

The treatment is the same. No, it’s not
enough to say you were there, felt it snap,
or shuttered a photo. Instead, run a man’s cold

finger down your breastbone and ask, See?
Feel that. Right there? I think it’s broken.
Pain, like living, requires corroboration.

So he palms your left breast and pushes
until something gives. A sound. His
opinion. A hole dug and the declaration

of empty space as something new.
An inverse peak. He confirms what’s already
inside you. Rib dispossessed of its hold,

the punchline out of sync. Meanwhile,
a mine shaft in South America collapses.
A deflation, though you are filling with things

that are not yours. What’s broken rises
like loaves. You’ve been researching
these injuries, this news, for hours.

Tell me, I’m right. That there’s a difference
between a spout and funnel. A fracture
and separation. A plane that was cleared to fly

or wasn’t. If the buk was stolen or given.
Birds kettle and people are kettled. The kettle
I forgot sings a high whistle. The dead are still

dead except we keep finding new things
to say about them. Every day is a rehearsal.
Set the action. Reach your end point. Reset.

Remember to look up and to the left.

You’re running for your life. The effects will
be added later, but we need your fear now.

They gave me a blue and white dress, sewed me
in, but said I could keep my own black shoes.
Said, if need be, we’ll cut you out at the end.

(Note: Title from a line in Eileen Myles’s poem “keats & i”)

Dani Couture is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, YAW (Mansfield Press, 2014), and the novel Algoma (Invisible Publishing, 2011). Sweet (Pedlar Press, 2010) was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and won the ReLit Award for poetry.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at [email protected].