You Swallow a Super Moon and a Doctor You Have Never Met Prescribes Prednisone
by Kari Flickinger
A golf ball was never
large enough to describe how
this misshapen throat could suddenly stop
my sound. A baseball! I tell
the receiver—the cell phone
because there are no receivers
other than a person receiving the
waves through a block of plastic
gears I hold to the side
of my head. Nobody knows
what happens inside
the cell phone. It’s modern magic.
Last week I
courted the moon from a stop sign.
Someone honked behind me—I
gestured at the sky. The sky. You idiot.
The moon. My god—this moon.
Winnowing—wide. She thrusts
cruelty through me.
She lodges. I swallow her
in my sleep—this moon.
I tell the operator—I tell the kaiser doctor.
My wrist has this tell—the catscratch
on my ring finger. That cat is
trying to take my ring finger clean off.
This is payback. Universal.
I hate it when people say the universe
has favored them in some way—I say
‘the universe’ all the time and
I chide myself
for nonsense—a universe does not
decide to reach down from being
and arrange my specific stars.
Cliché clicks up there
in the crescent ten percent
of my brain usage. If you do not
use it—you will
lose it—I whisper to my ring
finger—to
the ring I rarely wear. She cuts
my hand. Like the cat.
I tell the operator. I tell
the phone—doctor
I have a catscratch. She tells me
she has a kitten with sharp claws.
She tells me
sharp claws nick your hand—it might
take time to heal because
there is such
small circulation
in the universe of the fingers—in
the throat of this moon.
Cruel moon stalks—so
bright. Bright. She is too
too cutting—climbs
down from the universe—into my throat
she wields throat—6
pills in the morning—six pills in the evening—6
pills in the morning—six pills in the evening
6 pills in the mourning—six pills
and repeat and five—then five—then four—then four—then
three—o three—her two—too—two she is two two—two
one and one and one.
