Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
TWO POEMS<br />
By WILLIAM DORESKI<br />
Battery Acid<br />
Battery acid comes in a box. Weak sulfuric solution, bitter on the tongue but<br />
other<strong>wise</strong> palatable enough. I titer a quart into the punch. The wedding guests<br />
smile when they taste it. Mixes well with the liquor, lemons, grapefruit, and lime. I<br />
learned to swim in an acidic little pond on the Canadian border. Water so clear it<br />
made air look like porridge. Sizzling as I swam, I lost most of my flesh and<br />
learned to take pride in my bones. Exposed to the air after a mile or two in the<br />
harsh clean atmosphere, I re-fleshed myself as if donning ordinary clothes. That<br />
was the life. Now having slightly poisoned a hundred cheerful guests, I speechify<br />
and confess. Their applause seems more sincere than ever. For anyone who<br />
doubts, first aid remains an option. The bride kisses me in rainbow hues. The<br />
groom also kisses me, his lips as tough as condoms. The ugly smell of acid<br />
hovers, but like a bird of prey disdains to alight. I’ll take the rest of the punch<br />
home and use it to activate a battery left unused in a cupboard for many years.<br />
When it’s charged, I’ll shock myself as frankly as I dare, and that will be adequate<br />
apology.<br />
An Opera About Orpheus<br />
The creep and crawl of whispers on the breezeway. Opera on the radio.<br />
Something about “crown and charcoal burner,” but perhaps that’s a bad<br />
translation of the Italian. Or is it German? As I attempt to make out the words,<br />
the propane heater utters gusts of carbon dioxide. Time for my volunteer work at<br />
the hospital. Every evening I wheel patients up to the roof to enjoy the stars.<br />
Soon I have a dozen stargazers chatting about their favorite surgeries. They<br />
know all the medical terms, and relish pronouncing them with edged consonants<br />
and greasy vowels. From here the snow atop neighboring mountains seems<br />
illuminated or even illuminating. When you arrive at the hospital to help with<br />
these astronomically inclined patients you wheel them off the roof to crash in the<br />
parking lot three floors below. The bent and broken wheelchairs glitter in the<br />
lamplight. No one hurt, at least not hurt as much as our local surgical team has<br />
hurt them. Let’s go home and listen to more opera. I hope there’s one about<br />
Orpheus. I feel like a detached head still singing. I don’t miss my body at all.
Change language