Brandon Thomas DiSabatino

“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.

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.

JUKE

JOINT