Michael Flanagan

Stroke

You push the covers away, reluctantly get out of bed,
knowing the toast and eggs, the meat and potatoes
have to be paid for eventually. Some call sleeping
a day away a sin, the wife maybe, the garbage collector
who somehow knows. The neighbor hates if your lawn
isn't cut low, stares getting the mail, shaking his head. 
You shower, dress, eat standing up, already late.
In the car it's Neil Young's album, On the Beach,
or Los Lobos worrying about the goings on in Reva's
House. Really, it's too early for anything but classical
music, tuned low, but you need words today, some
distraction from what's coming. People you share
DNA with tend to die of strokes in their sixties.
Those in your life scoff at the fact but statistically
you're almost dead. The group home where you work,
eight in the morning, showering a 46-year-old mentally
challenged man covered in shit and piss, screaming
like murder though it's the same routine every time,
suds and shampoo, scrubbing away the feces, rinsing,
dressing him, sweat dripping from your hairline,
taking the punches he throws at you. Next, you're down
the stairs with two loads of putrid smelling laundry.
Twelve- or twenty-four-hour shifts, managing their
petty thefts, slamming of doors, cursing at you,
supervisors projecting their own ideas of a fulfilling
life onto guys who fight anything other than long drives,
eighties music through headphones, eating at McDonalds.
Your own home is a wall of silence, aggravation of a long
marriage to an innocent person you never had a thing
in common with, television tuned to content made
as filler so you don't need to think, absorb. Exhausted
you conjure a childhood that lacked any ease, questionable
moments turned by nostalgia into days you long to fall
asleep to, head back on the pillow desperate to feel
nine years old on a cold October afternoon, chasing
a friend to a backyard garage, climbing up on the roof,
sitting looking at the sky, talking together about schoolyard
basketball games, who of the two of you is Starsky,
who will be stuck being Hutch. Dreaming Halloween
dreams, excitedly anticipating apples that might have
razors in them, trick or treating until candy fills
pillow cases, stomachs rumbling all the way home.

 

Michael Flanagan was born in the Bronx, N.Y. and currently lives in Canada, on Prince Edward Island. Poems and stories of his have appeared in many small press periodicals across the U.S. His full-length poetry collection, Days Like These (Luchador Press), is out now. His chapbook, A Million Years Gone, won the 2009 Nerve Cowboy chapbook prize. It is available from Nerve Cowboy’s Liquid Paper Press.