JUKE
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JOINT
“night comes to the community pool.”
dancing again to songs
they swore to god they’d
never dance to, my father’s
brothers edge in thicket
through wild madder rows,
w/ briquette gums loped
​
in rag-county snuff, beating
salad bowls for drum skins,
coffee tin cymbals – their foam
coolers bob in breakers of
white birds.
​
the clouds are a town the
light aches to get out from,
they sing. the black river
moves like a raincoat.
“totem of bones in a brown paper sack.”
he is swimming
through what the air around him
has bartered
​
strapped back
in hydraulic bed,
tethered
by velcro strap –
arms wading through debris
that is brought
in the barter – molecules
to be pounded flat,
forced-out, mastered;
his teeth coarsened
(grey-black)
w/ torched paper –
his skin
a cracked, plaster cast
of the man
he is meant to resemble
​
the man he is meant to resemble
is rendered in miniature, posed
in 11x14 frames on the shelves
of this room, w/ blind eyes
walled behind chinese glass
looking down at the form
they’ve grown into. the past self
on these shelves
is a pastor of music
whose wife is fucking
the other pastors in the church, but the new self
in the bed
does not know this
​
its histories are as starved
as its organs
w/ a mind blown-out
like a match;
w/ a chewed-upon tongue
(belt-sanded /n raw)
that may as well be a motel
for all the good it’s doing.
​
i move to the photos
of the 11x14 man, hearing
his voice again, what it has
told me: “most people
seek salvation
w/ a drive-thru –
touchless automatic
like a car wash –
but not even a grassblade
takes god personally.”
​
his wife is telling me
about the ant colony
infesting the waiting room
when his body begins rolling
like a barbell; his lips snare
w/ tones of low,
curbwater moans, the feeding tube
ripped out
like an extension cord.
he is raising his hands
to call for music
as he used to –
conducting
some invisible band
behind the dry wall;
his arms fighting
to regain their rhythm
against the velcro straps
/n plastic lining of the bed,
against waste pans of piss
/n black shit splashed
over the carpet.
the orderlies arrive
to usher us out in white shoes
as if part
of his orchestration.
​
i am among them
in the parking lot
kicking crabapples over the asphalt
watching the shadow of something
heavy as water
hang over their heads –
but i refuse them, this lie
of shadow, however heavy
their water hangs –
he held the only thing that mattered
in whatever was left of his hands.
“paradise regained.”
he tells me
it’s illegal to be drunk
at a bar in alaska
​
(flipping the switch
of the schlitz beer sign on)
​
what i mean, he says
​
if this was alaska
i’d ask you to leave.
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Brandon Thomas DiSabatino is the author of the full-length poetry collection "6 weeks of white castle /n rust" and the "trashed haiku" xerox series. His work for the theater, "Down Among the Vultures" and "Sand in a Memphis Glass," has been performed in NYC and Cincinnati. Other writing has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, New Limestone Review, Belt Mag, Cathexis Northwest Press, After the Pause, Silver Needle Press, Stereo Embers and the Slush Pile Podcast. He currently lives in Kentucky.