A Thursday Afternoon in January While on Sabbatical
is the same as that drug bust twenty-five years ago when thepolice knocked, then banged, then circled the property. Iemptied my pockets, invited the cops in for a pot of coffee.This is where I detach with love and reattach it over there,which is how I structure my day while our mother waitsoutside your hospital room. Thursday crackles. Each exhalelike wallpaper peeling off plaster. I must have swallowed thewhole plastic bag of your innards. While you brush your teeth,the nurse suctions your mouth. If fluid soaks into the sponges,you'll drown. The heart in my stomach leaks. Did you happento pump an extra gallon of blood? This afternoon, I got a littledizzy. Scar tissue forms on the windows. What if you rip inhalf again? How many times can you cheat life? Is this how weget caught? Will I get arrested if I regurgitate a pair of lungsand a liver? Suck air and blow it out. If my confession hasn'tchanged, is everyone still hiding upstairs? The old it's-not-metrick is up my sleeve, and I have long sleeves that wrap aroundmy waist. I tie myself to Thursday and pull the minutes closer.If I yank hard enough, will garbage day arrive sooner? Is it lessabout rotting and more about purging? Does it work like anAdam's apple? Here I go again trying to remove the gullet ofdeath. My throat fell out. Did some stupid story about a godget trapped in your chest? For all we know, one of us is livingand one of us is dead and one of us is a bowhead whale holdingits breath.
Feature Date
- September 13, 2024
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Copyright © 2024 by Nicole Santalucia.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Nicole Santalucia is the author of The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Colorado Review, Palette Poetry, The Best American Poetry, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Sonora Review, Poetry Daily, Fourteen Hills, The Cincinnati Review, Voices in Italian Americana, Couplet Poetry, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Prize, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and the Arkana Literary Review Editor’s Choice Award. She is a Professor of English, the Director of First-Year Writing, co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council, and she serves on the steering committee of the Institute for Social Inclusion at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. She has led poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, Cumberland County Public Libraries, the Boys & Girls Club, nursing homes, and she’s the founder of The Binghamton Poetry Project. Santalucia received her M.F.A. from The New School University and her Ph.D. from Binghamton University.
Summer 2024
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