Phoebes snicker in tepid dawn.
I understand the nesting urge,
the purge of irrelevant idols
in favor of the household gods.
Fifty years since the senior prom
when dancing wasn’t optional
and the whispered floral offerings
perched on the edge of the abyss.
Last night I dreamed of a chasm
impossible to plumb. A car
parked in its private driveway
threatened to roll into space
deeper than what’s between stars.
I attempted to construct from squares
of plastic a barrier to brace
that car against bottomless doom.
It wasn’t my car but I feared
the depth and the consequent pain
as if something plumbed my innards.
I awoke wholesome enough
to remember the invitation
to the reunion I couldn’t bear.
The phoebes insist on nesting
on the light above my garage.
Their notion of home thus conforms
to mine. Solid and sweating men,
perfumed women, children shaped
to their environment rebuke me;
but enlarging the fable
will occupy the rest of my life;
and foretelling the failure of nests,
forgetting how to dance, or why,
and bracing objects against their doom
will have to represent me
in those books too fragrant to read.
You park on a slope that leans
backwards to Memorial Drive
and the river seething with vengeance.
As soon as we exit, the car rolls
and I run for it, leap inside,
slam my foot on the brake pedal.
The power brakes don’t work well
with the engine off. Cross-traffic
screams and halts, saving a wreck,
and the car lurches up a snow bank
to stop just short of the river.
I’ve banged my head so badly
a universe whirls in agony.
Stars devour planets, comets
sizzle past the mouths of black holes,
asteroids rasp in packs, fracturing
into smaller asteroids circling
moons that no longer function.
The pain redefines me in angst
that requires an ambulance.
You blame me for letting the car roll,
for failing to warn you to jerk
the parking brake, failing to stop
before crossing the busy drive.
I can’t explain how thick the force
that impels these little disasters,
how bell-shaped the curve of failure.
My headache demands a surgery
that unhinges whatever remains
of my intellect. The surgeon smirks
and with knife and fork feeds deeply
on my brain. When I emerge,
you stand snorting at my bedside
and claim I’m no longer of use.
The world has blurred in pastels
gentle enough to inhabit
without undue grief; but you
in your stocky old-fashioned manner
refuse to grant my heroics
even one page of your book of life.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and teaches at Keene State College. His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Atlanta Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Worcester Review, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, and Natural Bridge