Dark Night on Deck Upstairs

by

Lyman Grant

 

 

Every night I wake between one and four
to take a leak. The toilet is downstairs,
so I open the sliding door, step
on to the deck. Outside the city,
the stars stare down at me like cats’ eyes.
My feet and ankles are stiff, but I try
to steady myself, hold on to the railing,
and stick myself between the vertical
slats and let it go. Maybe it’s the beer
I drink to help me sleep, maybe my prostate
is beginning to warn me of my doom.
One night I heard perfectly how my dick
was this ancient part of me, pouring
out a stream of memories in a language
I could not translate. I watched the arc
of wisdom—my kidneys and bladder sighing
with me—descend into darkness, then turned
my eyes up to Ursa Major, the Pleiades.
Shaking myself, letting the last drips
fall, the sliding door closed tight,
I knew how easy it has always been
to vanish, to feed the roving hunger.
I closed my eyes, listened for silent paws,
breath, closing wings and open claws, listened
to the body’s syntax, to the diction
of blood and nerves. The night was clear as ice.
The piss pooled briefly, then disappeared.

 

Lyman Grant’s poems have appeared in Sulphur River Review, Timber Creek Review, Pikeville Review, The Cortland Review, and other journals. Poems have also been included in the anthologies Feeding the Crow, Best Texas Writing, and in Is This Forever, or What? He lives on a couple of acres outside Austin, Texas, with his wife and two youngest sons. More information can be found on his homepage.

 

 

 

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