Alan Bern
Grief Bacon
The sky is very blue today, and wide. I wish I’d been the first
to evaluate this vision and say blue, the first to stretch my arms
as far apart as possible, tugging my beautiful shoulders
from their globular sockets, inventing a whistle that sounded,
for the first time, like wide. Longer than the sky
have things been happening that we have yet
to name. We play at piracy, language pillaging, are tickled
over hygge, understand the parameters of attaché
and apéritif but can’t define where the mind goes when the body stops
resisting, what the horizon looks like there, how
the casual observer could mistake the vacancy
in my face for tolerance if anyone took
a picture of this, which he did, without asking, just the bright sudden flash
and the second and third sudden flash, the sheets and walls cast
to oblivion by his handheld coroner’s lamp. In German, they call weight
gained from emotional eating kummerspeck, which is the sum
of grief + bacon. So perhaps it’s a matter of simple
addition: the sky is bluewide, the woman
is heregone, every room
she walks into is monsterfull, allstaring.
Jess Smith is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice at Texas Tech University. Her work can be found in Prairie Schooner, Waxwing, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, and other journals. She is the recipient of support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. See more at www.jesselizabethsmith.com.
Retired children’s librarian Alan Bern is the author of three books of poetry. He has awards for his poems and stories and is an exhibited/published photographer. Alan performs with dancer Lucinda Weaver as PACES: dance & poetry fit to the space and with musicians from Composing Together. Lines & Faces, his press with artist/printer Robert Woods, linesandfaces.com.