Consciousness
Commuting, standing
in a half-empty
subway car, reading news
on my phone, an article
on two competing
theories of consciousness,
triggers a memory
triggers a memory buried
in the grey matter of my mind.
I am standing in the far corner
of a cavernous
single occupancy room
in the ICU.
Hospital bed articulated.
Shades drawn.
Sheets a white that emits
no light. Self-conscious
young woman in a chair
next to the door. Mechanical box
on the woman’s lap.
“Talk to her, please,” the
woman says.
The box tells the truth,
the woman will not.
Your mother is not conscious.
The space between me and
the bed expands. Monitors
hang like albatross in flight,
poised to land on her chest.
Monitors signal lines
and numbers.
Jump. Hop. Skip.
Numbers and lines.
The box speaks the truth
the woman will not.
Lines and numbers tell the story.
Story and truth.
Death by way of albatross
and shining sheets.
The downside to consciousness
is that while reading an article
on consciousness
your consciousness
will make you experience
that deep like it wasnow.
The subway car is
a cavernous room.
Lights dim.
Monitors hang.
And albatross descend.
Creole in St. Barth’s
Clouds fill the pool with
clear, chemical-free
water the doves
drink if they stand on the
lip
as fat
raindrops soak their feathers.
The word is pale, a pink plastered
Storefront Google shows
me when I search
for a restaurant near Saline.
The hermit crab whispers it as I place
him gently on the rocks
at that Grand beach.
“There is no creole,” he
says, “left in this place.”
At the supermarché,
rows of beige, limp asparagus,
chantarelles, cassoulet
preserved in jars. Artificial
yogurts in glass like baby
food and vast heads of red
leaf lettuce.
All sourced from France.
At an overlook in Gustavia, dark
skin between the palms
and aloes where the motorcyclists sit
with long dreads like ropes under
cherry-red helmets.
A couple and child at the restaurant.
Is the same child wearing a
pale pink smock and tight braids
barred behind fencing
as cranes move stone and beams overhead?
Her dark skin a void against the
stinging white of Pearl beach.