Christa Fairbrother
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The Anesthesiologist Works for the Bureau of Lighthouses Before you count me down, you reassure me, you’ll be here bright and shining to bring me back. And then it goes dark. I’m weightless in space, yet sense another presence. Luminous, leviathan-eyed, looms and disappears. I’ve brought oxygen tanks, the camera of my mind’s eye, trappings of technology to document this descent. Diving deeper, blue to black, so black, darker than inside my eyelids under pressure, then jellyfish twinkles. I reach out to embrace my hidden aquanaut, tentacle them close. This is calm. Pure peace, timeless quiet. I’m suddenly rubber-banded, hauled back to the surface spluttering. You kept your word, left the light on. I’m supposed to feel grateful, but all there is emptiness and hunger. ** We Are Not in Kansas Anymore The street behind my house is paved with bricks. Horses, wagons, cars have shifted them with time, loosened their mortar into arcs. The road bones are still there, but they show their age. Like my arthritic bones, worn down by the traffic pattern of my body. Slack in the ligaments, the roadbed fascia barely fast. On a hot sunny day, the red Georgia bricks bake. I want to curl up in the centre of the street with the little girl I once was, hug our burning brick bones close. ** The Sicilian Ophthalmologist I make this odyssey after lunch, once you’ve devoured your grigiliata, sit satiated. Your cave entrance is small, in unassuming 1980s office park décor, drab. Ushered inside, I spy dozens of distinct cavelets. One that blinds. Shoots me with lasers. Makes me cry. Or teases with puzzles. If I survive the trials of each, I’ll enter the main cavern to be seen. Like most giant egos, you prefer docile, sheepish patients. When you sidle up close to peer into the whites of my eyes, we sit teeth to teeth on edge, breath held for first blink. Your headlight bright cyclops eye looks into my soul. Right, then left casting for stowaways. I’m only released if the corona is clear. ** I Date the Allergist 10 AM Wednesday, your place. I show up early in anticipation. My arm is drawn and quartered with a tattoo over my tattoo. Same technique, pricked with a pin. Instead of pigment, a vial of mysterious poison is proffered. It makes math happen before our very eyes. Shrimp plus lobster equals no shellfish. The trees; oak, maple, pine, queue into number lines. Bermuda and crabgrass could become coequal culprits. The Jeopardy song serenades us as we wait for patterns to appear. Are sesame seeds greater than, or equal to, the value of hummus? Graph the surface area under the arc of point peanut to point tree nut. See if the answer is a proof for preventing migraines or a formulaic approach to yard work. You try all your tricks but fail to get a rise out of me. In the end, we’re just not each other’s type. No math or chemistry. ** Excavations With the Geneticist Mountains of sea shells. A mural’s worth of embroidery thread. Enough beads and rhinestones to besplendour Liberace, boxes of mysteries never before explored. My grandmother called it her craft room. But no crafts happened there. Hinges strained at the dam of a door holding in all the time that couldn’t be spent. Do you test for that? Packrat proclivities, truth in naming? If possible, please will you disclose her daughter, my mother? The history of the lacy telomeres trimming her bell-bottom jeans. The meaning of the left tilt vs the right of her pinball player head. The root of her reflective love that never mirrors others? I’ll settle for insight into women’s truths. The ones we hoard. The ones we should share. ** Regional Power Plays with the Endocrinologist As a kid, I Airstream silver-bulleted summers with my grandparents. On a tour of Hoover Dam, guided over the spillway, the cool water bucked us up into rainbows. Though, the generators were the real attraction. Mountainous turbines spun from miles of copper wire, emitted a loud hum, a comforting constant current. Now, I wonder if the same monstrous motors were your spark? Appointments with you are electric. A peak inside my power pack, contemplate the dials that indicate steady voltage. Out of spec, and a slight adjustment to my sluices brings the flow back into range. But we’ve never traced the water behind my dam. Does the seasonal forecast imply a stable supply? My generators light me up, and you keep me humming along. But just for a moment, I’d like to pause spinning. Create a backup plan. I have no contingencies for a drought. Do you? ** Christa Fairbrother, MA, is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet living in Florida. Her poetry has appeared in DMQ Review, Medical Literary Messenger, Orca, Plexus, The London Reader, and The Sunlight Press, among others. She’s been a resident with the Sundress Academy for the Arts, a participant in Writers in Paradise, and her chapbook, Chronically Walking, was a finalist for the Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Prize. She’s also the author of the multiple award-winning book Water Yoga (Singing Dragon, 2022). |
