miss Wilkinson says that she is very happy in her wilkinson life

rose Poème triste

the scar of which we’ve known from the very start

miss Wilkinson says that she is very happy in her wilkinson life
			miss Wilkinson says that she is very happy in her wilkinson life
			strong-willed stalks of Alzheimer’s sticky wings of dragonflies
			in Indonesia I read religion is very influential in daily life
			nurse, do you know if there is a god?
			don’t turn off the light give me the book and pencil my husband
Alan can never find the way here my son and daughter live on the
neighboring street the little nests on my branches in each three baby birds
Alan and I adore them we are very happy very happy.
			and how are your children, nurse?
			the nurse answers: my children lost it I’m sorry, miss Wilkinson,
my children lost it—the boy hung himself and the girl jumped out the
window.
			and then her husband Alan arrived and miss Wilkinson bade
farewell and left in a wheelchair for her happy wilkinson life
			and the nurse was left on the fourth floor of Toronto Western Hospital
at noon on Tuesday 20th October 2009.

rose Poème triste
there was no
rose of exiles of memories
see the tattoo on my
wrist
when
in an LSD trip
we confessed to each other
he held me
right here
we were bound
by a soft rosy room
12 days in 1968
and
7 murderers
masturbat
i
ng
s
tared
s
pilled looking for the same thing
in
others through the mirror
(in the ceiling)
watched
i was
fr
i
ghte
nd
i was only a lad of 18
the murderer Peter Woodcock
attached himself to me
i believed
to protect me from
the murderers
when 30 years later
i
saw him in the corridor in Oak Ridge
he did not remember me
the same rose was on his wrist
(after the rosy room
he did mine i did his)
he said
underro
se
ijacko
ff on memor
y

the scar of which we’ve known from the very start
on the New York subway opposite us sat a black man with a pink scar across his neck
he was listening to the voices
I know about the voices because Dima had exactly the same scar
after he tried to cut his head off

Margaret Atwood has a poem about a hunter at the very end of the path
speaking of how his innocent soul runs as if it were the hoof of a deer;
at the end of the poem he throws his head back
and there in plain view the scar of which we’ve known from the very start

Dima told Zhenya about his voices
Zhenya told Denis
Denis told me half a year after Dima hung himself

Dima told Zhenya that he heard how people on the minibus were talking about him
about how he wasn’t okay

when Denis told me about the voices
I thought why oh why didn’t Dima tell me
I would have saved him

in 2005 at the corner of Romenskaya Street and Ligovsky Avenue I asked Dima about the scar
he lied about being slashed with a knife in a fight but I believed
I learned the truth when I learned about the voices
on the wintry road on the way to the cemetery
now after three years I understand why he didn’t tell me
he didn’t want me to know that he wasn’t okay
he didn’t want me to know that everyone knew he wasn’t okay from the very start
his mother knew he wasn’t okay as soon as he was born
so she abandoned him at the hospital
and at the orphanage everyone knew that he wasn’t okay
so he was sent to a school for the intellectually disabled
every single person knew but I didn’t
and so he didn’t tell me
and I didn’t save him

and when I looked at the man sitting opposite us on the New York subway
and saw his, Dima’s, eyes and his, Dima’s, scar—the misplaced suture for schizophrenia
and when I knew that he listened to his, Dima’s, voices
I knew that someone better than me was saving him
and so he is here, alive