Issue 21: Burgess Needle
survivor
the qum rug in my parents home in Newton Centre
was for admiring not touching or twisting
as for the chess pieces set in place
from the last game between my father and dead brother
the less said about moving them the better
I was the survivor the one child who escaped
the emotional flames and when I first learned
the word irony I knew it applied to the chilled air
between my parents that supplanted all that heat
still they saw my gift in math and all the awards that adorned
the walls of the unadorned so when a distant program beckoned
we managed hugs and I was gone swimming
the realms of math and physics better than
fresh water in arid heat which applies
here in Tucson more than anyone will ever know
who has not visited this valentine state of insanely
beautiful sunsets and neanderthal politics again as i said i
was satisfied smug and even a little happy but not enough
so after a while bored with my neighborhood and the placid men
who pursued me I strolled out toward the university searching
for something else beneath a half moon’s hazy glow something
I missed and did not could not identify which is when a whistle
blew out at me from the shadows behind Arizona stadium and I ask
now why they call it freebasing when it is anything but free
hey just a joke where I’m coming from all my lab experiences
taught me a freebase is created by dissolving it in water then heat
with baking soda until the water boils off
i was someone who also knew how slow atoms became at absolute zero
but sucking in meth smoke turned me into a static-charged bolt
of light that brushed the hip of my man slikjax with my skin saying
sub-atomic is so charming
but he didn’t get it and by then I didn’t give a shit anyway
because my fortune had been ripped away past and present
vaporized links to the clickety clack world
severed all because I followed that whistle and party sounds
into darkness and the arms of slikjax who couldn’t even multiply
perhaps not even count but knew what I needed more than I did
hooking me up to that ecstatic smoke from a glass ball
and then endless pleasure on top of the local strata used condoms
broken needles burnt spoons pigeon guano glass pipettes
and all the rest that was it for physics never mind
dr. roth’s promise of a lab where I would have worked
with matter at absolute zero
now I radiate heat and speak a different tongue devolved
as mine’s become synonymous with his it became a truth
now all I wanted was molten skin with slikjax more smoke
from the glass orb a few more judicious inhales
no they’re hits so good and fine I never returned to the familiar
discarding cool logic no dropped logic like a snakeskin
and as a reptile I slithered here and there with whomever
had an 8-ball when loverboy wasn’t around
to hand off just 3.5 grams for a few hundred bills or in my case
several go-arounds for the pleasures of my skinny behind
until the black and whites scooped me up like a stiff turd in winter
and by the time i returned to this all dried out
I remained addled burdened disconnected unhinged unemployable
bringing these words up to the present and me on parole
in dunkin’ donuts because halo’d Nicki who hired me
without a pause tats and all just wear long sleeves she said
with a whisper and a hug still I never stopped seeing that the curve
of the store’s croissants followed the same fibonacci sequence
as a snail’s even though not a thing mattered anymore except
for slikjax’s return because when I ride with him I watch
the realm of physics being stretched by speed
saguaros become emerald water color with blue cactus wrens
peeking out blurs bowing and bending then I take another hit
to keep it all going that’s what he did he kept me in the thrall
of getting off showing me that biting revved sex when he was riding
me and that was cool if a little sad
but still okay until that Indian boy with the scar on his cheek
appeared and ruined my balance forever
or saved me I forget which
Burgess Needle’s poems have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Concho River Review, Raving Dove, Boston Literary Magazine, Decanto, Centrifugal Eye, Iodine, Kritya, Prism Review, Blue Lake Review, Minotaur, Nutshell Magazine and DeComp Magazine among others. Diminuendo Press published his poetry collection Every Crow In The Blue Sky in 2009. His second collection, Thai Comic Books was published in 2013 by Big Table Press.
He taught English for two years in Nang Rong, a small village in northeast Thailand for the Peace Corps, been a co-director of the Southern Arizona Writing Project and was a school librarian for thirty years. He now lives in Ripton, Vt with a hazel-eyed woman of great charm and wit. Find out more about Burgess
Copyright © 2018 by Burgess Needle, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
