Without looking

Fotografia de Samantha Sophia

Either at my friend’s daughter’s

sixteen-year-old body dumped

on the morgue slab, T-shirt

stuck fast to one ripped

breast I identified quick, and then

got out of there

or at the old gentleman

with tubes in the living room, spittle

stained in his wispy

beard, out of

the corner of my eye I hardly

notice it, how

could I, drink in hand

at five-thirty, at the least

sign of pain one of us always itches

to turn away, another turns

over in sleep, groans

O, we who are so lucky

just to be able to

ignore, go back

quick, to our books, to

have books, even, how

difficult it is to look

hard and head

on has not been said

often enough, if prayer

is an act of attention

even to dropped stitches, blood

dangling beneath the lines, the

poem? I said,

what prepares us for what

will never save us?

Patricia Goedicke