Ellis Elliot

“Easy Fix,” “After Words” &
“Our Truest Hungers”

EASY FIX

This is what I’m looking for, the SuperBrainOmeter

to produce a ticker-tape explanation of him.

Use soothing words, please, like lullaby and sugared

violets. Not like hemorrhage and thalamus bleed.

Although they have a slight allure.

 

He has no smile or grimace to illuminate my way,

only clear, hazel eyes. One fixed, one following.

May I have your attention for a minute? I ask

the fixed eye, I have a few questions. The answer

is clear burnished copper, with a jade-green sheen.

AFTER WORDS

1.     Kathleen at the hair salon knows when she swishes the blue-black styling cape around me to always move to the first snap, so the thin hem of collar does not touch my neck.

2.     The larynx looks like a fortune cookie poised on top of the trachea in the neck. Hollow, it is commonly called the voice box.

3.     My middle son insisted on wearing his Woody the Cowboy pajamas to Miss Penny’s Preschool every day for a week. My oldest son wore a black cape with red satin lining that his grandmother made. He wore it for years. He said it made him feel powerful.

4.     Afterward, at work, my half-words hung suspended and unformed from my lips. My coworker Dorothy fretted, circling her palm on my back, and offering cold water.

5.     Air travels from the lungs up into the trachea, and then through the larynx. Muscles contract in the larynx to manipulate vocal cords into making sound.

6.     I remember the light from the pole in the parking lot of my first apartment in midtown Memphis, fracturing in flashes and reflecting off a nearby window. I remember his hands fit easily around my neck. I remember my vision blurring like a rain-streaked windshield. I remember my back on the wet asphalt and

the raspy huff I made as air returned to my windpipe.

7.     If you place your middle finger just past the center of the front of your neck and press, it will become uncomfortable and you will cough. If you place the thumb behind the neck and press with four fingers in front, the sensation intensifies.

8.     The first time, Kathleen placed the styling cape collar on the third snap. My breath quickened and I used my index and third finger to quickly pull it off.

9.     When I told my sons about what happened twenty-five years later, I still used the word “mugging” instead of “assault.” The police told me to just be glad all they wanted was my car.

OUR TRUEST HUNGERS

1.

the crisis of so-and-so’s unhappiness

pales

next to my son.

 

(Boy

recalibrates

world)

 

the opinions

matter less and less the more

you walk down the street

with a boy whose lumpy looks

attract attention.

                                                                                     She waits by the phone

                                                                                    while her bathtub overflows,

                                                                                     the pink moon rises

2.

you hold         

your child’s body,

hold its flesh and heat

close, like a skin

of fire, because

you need to hang on

to what life

there is.

 

the need to eat drives us,

sex makes us shameless,

but touch is our truest hunger.

                                                                               

            Sitting beside her

                                                                                                 deathbed, our fingers laced,

                                                                                                the last true prayer

3.

I had to find a place for him

to live, outside our home.

 

seven years it took to get

to the most painful thing

I’ve ever done

                                                                        The most painful thing

                                                                        sits beside relief in the front

                                                                         row, holding hands.

4.

he is an experiment

in human life

lived in the rare atmosphere

of the continuous present.

 

few survive.

 

Time, the magician,

                                                                        pulls bright scarf after bright scarf

                                                                        from his black top hat.  

5.

Minda,

my new god,

refused to refer

to any potential group home

he could move into

as just his house.

she says, it’ll be

your house too,

and I will find it

for you

 

             Four ways to find God. 

                                                                                    Watch a spider spin her web.

                                                                                    Taste rain. Ask. Grieve.

6.

Minda said when she met us,

it was as if the roof

was coming in.

Who admits

they’ve had a child

and can’t raise him?

If this is our fate,

                                     put us down, but then earth turns,

                                     peacocks show their plumes. 

7.

I’m a wreck.

it is as if the shape

he gave my life, this deep fate

he handed me, is melting.

 

this house without him,

my body a cave.

                                                                        My body a cave

                                                                        like a singing bowl, empty,

                                                                        notes of him, ringing

8.

I can remember nights

I was so far gone,

spent and totaled,

I started to laugh.

 

A madman. Christ,

  

I was so tired: 

I remember lifting my legs

  to go up the stairs,

  as if they were hefty stumps.

I remember thinking:

I can’t do much more of this.

 

                                    Seen as madman, Christ

                                    was weary like the rest of us,

                                    did not float, but walked 

9.

The shaman lit a pipe and began

a long incantation.

 

I see a lot of elders.

They have come to see him.

This is the path

he has chosen for himself.

 

The interpreter asked

if I had questions. I said, 

What about this new group home?

Is this good for him?

 

The shaman said,        It will change his path,

but his path is his path.

He has to go down his own path.

For the first time,

someone wasn’t trying

to fix him.

Instead of trying

to make him better,

or diagnose, it was what

and who he is.

 

It wasn’t triumph

or tragedy.

It just was.

 

                                                                        His path is his own 

                                                                        Trees point the way, speak languages

                                                                        Only he understands 

10.

I knew

I loved him,

and I knew

he knew.

 

I held sweetness

in my arms,

and waited.

 

I held sweetness once,

I carry the beautiful

inside me like winter

*This poem is a combination of Found Poems, from the text of the book The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son by Ian Brown, and original, atypical haiku in italics, intended as a type of “call and response.”

Ellis Elliott is a writer, teacher of ballet, and facilitator of online writing groups. She has a blended family of six grown sons and lives in Juno Beach, FL. She has an MFA from Queens University, is a contributing writer for the Southern Review of Books, and section editor for The Dewdrop contemplative journal.