MellowBird Posted March 1, 2012 Either Or BY NICK LANTZ “He is either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.” —Donald Rumsfeld You haven’t heard from your father in six months and you can’t bring yourself to call. In Bengal, farmers wore masks on the backs of their heads to ward off tigers, who, one supposes, wouldn’t attack a man who was watching. If I don’t call, you thought, nothing is wrong. Each possibility is a cavern eaten out of limestone by water. Naming everything is a way of naming nothing. His family dropped away like cicada husks swept off tree trunks by rain. One brother, heart attack. His father’s two feet taken by diabetes, then his father by stroke. In a tornado, leave your windows ajar. A doorway for an earthquake. In a lightning storm, do not pick up the phone. Learn to see out the back of your head. His youngest brother, weeks dead before discovery: the couch where he died, face down, shadow of rotted flesh stained into fabric, ghost of a face. Imagination kills the living just as easily as it brings back the dead. In Turkey, they hang the nazar—teardrop of blue glass— on lintels, above beds, from the rearview mirror. To ward off evil, they say. ( http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240424) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
