The Marbled Sigh

I’m not a fascinating person but

 —after Chen Chen’s “I’m not a religious person but“

from time to time I think maybe I could be one of Chen Chen’s least effective angels. Interning, sending vague emails, etc. Attempting to cover the bright red splotches that appear out of nowhere on the front of my chest, creeping up like angry ivy over the scalene triangles on both sides of my neck when I get stressed. I’m not sure about the fetching coffee part? I don’t drink coffee. Actually I can’t even think about making coffee; it fills me with too much anxiety. It just seems so important, like something you CANNOT mess up. I push in my nose ring; wear long sleeves to hide my tattoos. When you ask about strengths I would say I am patient and able to identify every muscle in the human body. Origins and insertions, actions and innervations. Blood supply. I can show you the stack of illustrated flash cards I’ve made using oversized index cards if you’d like. I keep them tied in a brown velvet ribbon but it doesn’t take much to unravel. I should admit I don’t have a tattoo. I was never brave enough. If I did it would be the outline of the small island in the Baltic Sea where my mother was born. A little heart halfway down the peninsula to mark the location of the farmhouse where her grandmother administered herbs and chanted secret words to sick animals. And also maybe people, but I’m not sure. She didn’t write anything down. I write everything down. If I don’t write it down maybe it didn’t happen. I watched my Aunt’s funeral live-streamed on Facebook today. What happens on earth stays on earth. I don’t know if I would say the same for Facebook. Anyway I am trying as hard as I can with all this. Nervous sweating. Hot blushing. I want to make a good impression. My Aunt was a kind soul. Not the kind who has a sign on her living room wall that says be kind in fancy letters, but the kind of kind you recognize when you sit down next to her at a family gathering and you feel like you don’t have to say anything at all. My voice is shaking, but since, like I said earlier, I want to make a good impression I should tell you I made up the whole thing about the nose ring too. If you had known ahead of time that I was an Enneagram Type Four this wouldn’t have been a surprise, but there’s no place for that kind of thing on the form. But, here; point to any muscle on your human body and I will name it for you. That much is true.

Ode to Lake-Effect Snow

My body hates summer hates July hates

August hates the humidity of it all fights

hard against the heat with all its holy might

pressure rises tissues swell inflammation

my middle name I aim the amber bottle

at my palm tap out a tapered dose of prednisone

for which I will pay dearly in lack of sleep

puffy cheek irritability & excessive sweating

I fill a plastic cup with m&ms I like the sound

of them falling and what else is there for me

to do in this state but wait it out under the ceiling

fan the inadequate window unit churning out

a kind of chant I was born just north of Buffalo

in the middle of December bring me back.

Window Visit

I’m sorry you couldn’t hear us. Couldn’t

get out of the chair, couldn’t manage

the phone with your right arm held fast

in an ivory cast and a strapped-on navy-blue

sling; your thin frame drowning in a too big Lake

Placid sweatshirt that wasn’t even yours

to begin with. And us at the window peering in—

the bright blue sky and the cotton-ball

clouds surrounding you like a billowing

throne in the reflection. I’m sorry

you are having to live through these difficult

times after having lived through so many

difficult times already. Well, I don’t want

to keep you you said and the aide

in her mask and her gloves

pulled you back and you

and the wheeled-chair

made of clouds

retreated into the cool

dark shadows of the strange

and quiet room.

And out of our sight.

Citrine Friend

Bigger than a bread box and shining like the edge of the January sky she has been in my pocket for eons. In neon we slept beneath an ad-hoc constellation of press-on glow-in-the-dark stars. Like the icy ridges etched into the surface of the lake after a storm she is coarse and many-edged and can be cold as last night’s wind. Come spring she’ll absorb the warmth of the sun passing its heat along to the creased palm of my hand. She is veined in color both dark and light, a canning jar of sudden moves. We all have cracks. But when I tap upon her heart I never have to wonder who is there. Every so often I offer her a soft place to land—the robin’s nest over the front door, a walnut-sized cotton-lined cardboard box, a moonlit bath, a body scrub of sacred herbs. A gentle reminder of who we were before all the striving dimmed our earthly power. She could be a glass of ginger-ale just poured and swirling or the CO2 bubbles bursting in my unsurprised eyes.

I’m Going Back to Tonawanda For a Fish Fry During Lent

—after Danez Smith

going back for the tongue-searing beer-battered haddock

& the baskets of sweet potato fries flooded with butter & honey.

i’m going back for the still-warm corn muffins & the tangy coleslaw

& for the potato salad & the tartar sauce & for the squeeze of the quartered

lemon. i’m going back to the folding chairs & the VFW & the Knights

of Columbus & the American Legion Hall & the basement of the Methodist

Church. i’m going back to the frozen grimy snow-lined streets & the potholes

& the stop signs & the sheets of blue ice that beat against the rocks at the edge

of the dark river & the smell of cigarette smoke & fried fish & the sound

of the train whistle dissolving into a gray damp mist. O Tonawanda, don’t you know

you will never make sense to me?  i’m stumped by the way these salt-

stained boots have made a habit of spreading your grit.

---

Susan Barry-Schulz grew up just outside of Buffalo, New York. She is a licensed physical therapist and poet living with chronic illness. Her poetry has appeared in SWWIM, Barrelhouse online, Shooter Literary Magazine, Bending Genres, B O D Y, Gyroscope Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, West Trestle Review, The Wild Word, Stone Canoe, Heron Tree, One Art, Caustic Frolic, Okay Donkey, Quartet and in many other print and online journals and anthologies.