by Zaynab Bobi
The Secret Fate of All Life (vi)
from a series of Golden Shovels inspired by True Detective, Season 1
It’s not the sirens that haunt me / those wailing red poppies / if I
am being honest / it’s the driver / gurney in hand / entering darkness without think-
ing of what waits at the end of the cul-de-sac / it’s not the
knowledge that he is paid to usher the dying to God / an honorable
profession on paper / the sawblade tornado in everyone’s soul is the thing
I can’t forget. What if the driver is hungrier than weather / looking for
redemption on the other side of the door / our
only hope of survival trapped inside his hungover skin / the only species
that murders or heals on a bourbon-thirsty whim. On his way to
confront his cheating wife / he gets the emergency call / what to do
with the gun / the bullets / the words he has practiced? The baby is
waiting to
be revived. Later as he washes blood from the sidewalk / he will deny
his choices / deny the vibration of the moon / deny everything our
mothers prayed for. It’s not the unholy programming
of our lives / that keeps me awake / nothing but the driver’s eyes will stop
me from sliding / into the creek of tadpole dreams / reproducing
memories like musical notes / he rounds the corner on two wheels. I walk
backwards to stop the future / to guide his hand
away from the jagged blade / to the jagged breathing / jagged in
the smooth alleyways of heaven / to guide her warm hand /
into
the blue churn of ocean. Later as he returns to the ambulance /extinction
is not on his mind / he gathers the tools of his trade / one
by one / stethoscope / Narcan / barbed wire / jumper cables / the last
sound from his wife’s skinny throat / the owl who screeches at midnight.
It’s not the necessary ghosts who haunt me / it’s their owl-eyed brothers /
programmed for revenge / it’s the way he turns off the headlights and
she never sees him coming / what shall we do my lost sisters /
how do we turn the creature from its path / our blood moon opting
to hide in the waves? I walk backwards / I walk out
of the hospital / as alive as the field mouse hiding in the churn of
white clover / the sprouting grass moon in my rear-view mirror / a
list of disguises: the bourbon / the tadpole / the owl / the raw
deal.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poetry has been widely published and nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and the Orison Anthology. Her debut full-length poetry collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, was published in 2021 (Kelsay Books), and her third chapbook, The Water Cycle, was published by Variant Lit in January 2022. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Twitter and Instagram @bethgordonpoet.
Zaynab Bobi, Frontier I, is a Nigerian poet, digital artist, and photographer from Bobi. She is a member of Hilltop Creative Art Abuja branch, Poetry Club Udus, Frontier Collective, and a Medical Laboratory Science student of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. Her artworks and photographs are published and forthcoming in Blue Marble Review, Barren Magazine, Isele Magazine, Native Skin, Type House Literary Magazine, Night Coffee Lit, Wrongdoing Magazine, Rulerless Lit, Harbour Review, B’K Magazine, Olney Magazine, All My Relations, Salamander Ink, Anti-Heroin Chic, Acropolis Journal, and more. She tweets @ZainabBobi.