I’m now the remedies—
Two pills, Crown Royal and water
Bittersweet with roses, Daughter
Of Fine Absurdities.
I am the antiphon.
And I’m responding for the dead
In mind on mornings when the head
Does acrobatics on
The clouds. I’m naked in
A stranger’s home, twelve needles placed
Like hairs in living tissue, spaced
On each meridian.
Black voodoo doll, all out
In the open, and now I’ve bet
The whole fake farm. The table’s set.
And I breathe in, breathe doubt,
Hearing new age music
At will on empty patios.
I am the great placebo
For me, even you, sick
In my same waiting room.
I am the lab where everything
Does what it doesn’t do. Getting
Well, I see concrete bloom
And I find happiness
In leaves soaking like wrinkled hands
In tepid baths of rain, frail hands
I hope to slap then kiss
Until the dithyramb
Fades to a headache, though I’m too
Far gone to flinch and nothing’s true.
I don’t know what I am.

Original appearance in Blackbird.