Rescue me after the gangrenous limb’s been cut off, diabetes, osteosarcoma,
the jeep careens into an evening, my head splits on the floor, rescue me after I’ve
gone blind from complications. If this is it, then I don’t think much
of it, then I’m varnished in gasoline. Rescue comes at the age of thirty, my
life so pleased with itself it multiplies in my prostate, my colon,
my cervix, my breast. Rescue me for the lesions in my brain, my blood as
it sputters around the bullet, Je reste avec vous says my liver, my skin
a sunrise surprise, my right ear a cesspool, my will to survive propped up by
cheap gin. For when my desire to be remembered reaches for the rolodex,
meet me after pneumonia, the plague, or great pain. Barbiturates succor me,
deliver me after I’m bludgeoned by a lover I’ve betrayed. Off a steamship
or a cliff, my balls slapped silly with a jimmy gooseneck, I’ve filled my
pockets with rhapsodic farewells. Long on style and short on sense
my sentence is a bottle cap—save me when my throat’s slow to close over it.
Cayanan, M. (2019). Poem from I Look at My Body and See the Source of My Shame: Ecstasy Facsimile (Rescue me after the gangrenous limb’s been cut off). Illinois: Crab Orchard Review, 24, 9.
