Jaimie Gusman

Still Life with John Allyn Smith

How many habits do I have to give up
before I'm healthy and boring?
I thought I had until at least 25
before starting to count everything
under a patch of grass
where nobody’s missing.
After Wilma passed
I had a breast exam
where a nurse discovered my heart
murmured like a celebration.
I felt awfully confused
about my anatomy when I left.
What could Berryman have thought
was worse than ice-hockey
or a doctor’s appointment?
If I were machine,
I would malfunction during an EKG.
I would update myself.
Do you ever feel that way?
like you would say yes to anything
that could read you better than a word?

Still Life with Nancy Kerrigan

Hello to the mad heart and the messy heart.
Hello to the magi and their money aching hats.
Hello to the magic of combing your hair.
Hello to the marker for this way up and east.
Hello to the masters of vaginal arousal.
Hello to the mate of the boat and the wind.
Hello to the means to the end of an end.
Hello to the menstruating pig and her ears.
Hello to the milk setting the world down.
Hello to the missing, to the impending impulses.
Hello to the mockery with this horse on mute.
Hello to the modernicide and motorcycle clans.
Hello to the monkeys and the invention of meat.
Hello to the moon as a knock on the door.
Hello to the moors of an animal's dreaming.
Hello to the mortuary and the birth canal.
Hello to the multiplication of my mother's eyes.
Hello to the music of Brain and Soul and Bark.
Hello to the mysterious cold gaps in this window.

about the author

 

13.1 (Fall 2008)   The 2River View