Darren Morris
Succulence and Similar Accidents
People forget that Ulysses made it home
only to go voyaging again. The second time,
his ship sank and anticlimactically he drowned.
Last week, I cheated watermelons. A truck
had tipped its trailer at the highway interchange
where I passed only minutes before. I had
no idea. My wife told me at the door. On my arrival,
I had been in no special condition, which is
the natural state of nonbeing. But it changed
me that she was so different. Behind her, a little vase
lay in pieces. Her dress was torn. Her face,
a mess. A toe shed rose petals across the tile.
Peterbilt thunderheads cruised over our house.
We kissed and her leg enwrapped me where I stood
as if I’d come back, purified by a wreck I never saw.
She’d heard the news and timed it to my trip
which placed my car on the off-ramp after work.
She must have seen my tires where they spun,
heard the tic within my watch, felt the sway of keys
upon the chain. Simple men could be kings of all,
if only they believed as she believed in me.
Attending to my alter fate as I rarely had,
she must have seen me skid on the juice and explode
into a wall or some other innocent. She must have
imagined the worst, which meant my absence was the worst.
That the world could be restored only if her hope
that I was deathless could persist. Indeed, who among
you have enjoyed a more noble birth? Extricated
by the jaws of life, we fell into our car-crash love.
Or so I thought. Yet I worried about the past,
that the ballast for her fear was not my immortality
but only memory of those ghosted men who left her
to the lost, who abandoned her entire and failed
to seize the crucial elements that her body bore.
Those who made her feel as if she never was at all.
The next day, two minutes before I crossed the same spot,
it was pigs that had been scattered at the interchange.
Driving slowly, I could see that most had not survived.
Many of us even stopped and wept in our cars--
some for the carnage, but more for having seen it.
Others honked their horns and sped around
not wanting to look. But what got me were the pigs
who were still alive—the lucky ones, I guess.
Those untouched few, who grazed a blood-filled
bliss, gorging on melons that still lined the ditch.
only to go voyaging again. The second time,
his ship sank and anticlimactically he drowned.
Last week, I cheated watermelons. A truck
had tipped its trailer at the highway interchange
where I passed only minutes before. I had
no idea. My wife told me at the door. On my arrival,
I had been in no special condition, which is
the natural state of nonbeing. But it changed
me that she was so different. Behind her, a little vase
lay in pieces. Her dress was torn. Her face,
a mess. A toe shed rose petals across the tile.
Peterbilt thunderheads cruised over our house.
We kissed and her leg enwrapped me where I stood
as if I’d come back, purified by a wreck I never saw.
She’d heard the news and timed it to my trip
which placed my car on the off-ramp after work.
She must have seen my tires where they spun,
heard the tic within my watch, felt the sway of keys
upon the chain. Simple men could be kings of all,
if only they believed as she believed in me.
Attending to my alter fate as I rarely had,
she must have seen me skid on the juice and explode
into a wall or some other innocent. She must have
imagined the worst, which meant my absence was the worst.
That the world could be restored only if her hope
that I was deathless could persist. Indeed, who among
you have enjoyed a more noble birth? Extricated
by the jaws of life, we fell into our car-crash love.
Or so I thought. Yet I worried about the past,
that the ballast for her fear was not my immortality
but only memory of those ghosted men who left her
to the lost, who abandoned her entire and failed
to seize the crucial elements that her body bore.
Those who made her feel as if she never was at all.
The next day, two minutes before I crossed the same spot,
it was pigs that had been scattered at the interchange.
Driving slowly, I could see that most had not survived.
Many of us even stopped and wept in our cars--
some for the carnage, but more for having seen it.
Others honked their horns and sped around
not wanting to look. But what got me were the pigs
who were still alive—the lucky ones, I guess.
Those untouched few, who grazed a blood-filled
bliss, gorging on melons that still lined the ditch.