Twelve Gates

Strict and bound 

as an analog watch, 

Aristotelian narrative 

calls for a probable

necessary sequence. 

It is suicide season.

The calendar taunts 

with year three’s death dance. 

Dialysate swills 

in my abdomen. 

Long arrows of surgery 

nudge under my ribs

            trace my hipbones 

                        garland my navel. 

Along my lower back 

divots of biopsy

freckle into sickles 

when I bend over. 

Driving over the city bridge 

quirk or quark humming

            I might be spared.

My grandmother loved

singing O What a Beautiful City 

as she sorted her pills.

The anesthetic mask

shatters linear discipline:

            Trotting the deep path by mosslight, 

            son is a dark-haired universe 

            in the crook of my right arm. 

            Five pound blood-hum

            prayer and verse ripping 

            my skull pure off.

            Time has me scalped

            kissing the whorls of my brain 

            with frank red lips. 

Rolling up from surgery

I look down to my wrist

where someone has clasped 

my watch on loosely.

Copyright © 2019 by Laura Da'. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 14, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.