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Eleven months have galloped into history,
and me without one goddamn thing to show.
Twenty-eight days or so, it's hello crappy new year.
I hear the hellish bells, the hallelujahs
of carolers crooned ghoulishly off-key.
You're killing me, I scream at the performers,
in my morbid chord — a bouncy B.
So cold, this time of year, so fucking frigid, my tits
shake like maracas under five layers of clothes
as if within the hands of some wild Mexican,
hopped up on ganja, Cuervo and No-Doz.
I don't suppose what lies ahead will be much brighter.
I don't care, so long as everybody knows: I'm growing older,
bent and broke, my whole nest egg's spent (no joke),
I've spat and spoken, crabbed and coped, and come the first,
I'll rope my bony resolution — ride it barebacked
to the border, smuggle hope.
I guess I should have felt something when I fell out of love;
a lump in the gut, a chokehold of throat, instead I barely noticed.
Like losing lashes one by one, the subtlety enormous.
Boredom played a major role, let's call it Marlon Brando.
A streetcar speeding unseen by desire —
and me, so Blanche Dubois, in dim light's parlor.
My heart of hard rock greened with moss,
up-tossed toward the next scene;
no crack in my patella, zero needles in my spleen.
is soaking in a little cup
of saline, right beside the bed. A socket
provides energy — the light
reflects old fan blades off the iris.
I think of how she lifts the lid,
digs underneath,
thumbs out acrylic roundness,
keeps her other hand cupped under,
well-prepared in case it falls.
How she always waits till she's alone
to do this. How she handles it
with feathered hands, withstands
the depths perception won't allow her.
How her mother took her eye out with a switch
because she didn't wash and dry the dishes.
How she polishes her eye as if it were her mother's
silver. How she tempers horror
with a gore for laughter.
In her drawer, she keeps a spare. You see,
she says, these things get lost
if you're not careful.
K.R. Copeland is the Art Director for Unlikely 2.0. Please check out her bio page.
"Sensory Loss" first appeared in Copius Magazine. "My Great Aunt Dot's Prosthetic Eye" first appeared in Pedestal Magazine.