Trans Orbital Lobotomy
Copyright © 2017 by sam sax. “Trans Orbital Lobotomy” originally appeared in Madness (Penguin, 2017). Reprinted with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2017 by sam sax. “Trans Orbital Lobotomy” originally appeared in Madness (Penguin, 2017). Reprinted with permission of the author.
what to call you who i’ve slept beside through so many apocalypses
the kind that occur nightly in this late stage of the collapsing west
boyfriend was fine even though we are neither boys nor men but love
how it makes us sudden infants in the eyes of any listener—how
it brings us back to some childhood we never got to live. that was,
now she’s gone my teacher wants to know
where the speaker enters the poem
the wind blows open the screen door & it catches
on its chain. outback my neighbors are smoking
a pig to make it last. my teacher only became
my teacher after she passed. before that
and again the test comes back negative for waterborne parasites
for gonorrhea of the throat and of elsewhere for white blood cells in the stool
this isn’t always true sometimes it’s a phone call from your lover
sometimes it’s your computer blinking on with news of what’s wrong
with your body this time