Tuned Every Night
Soon as I’m up my upper right eyelid resumes twitching
and not in time to Here Comes the Sun.
My toothbrush teases my tongue tip.
Any instant can open the door for despair.
As in a cackle of hyenas.
As in a swan without her wedge.
As in the lead dog eaten by four teammates.
Then nightfall, a loose uncertainty.
As in fitting a projection into a recess.
As in the beast breathing heavy again outside the window.
Despair like holding a bag of shit without a dog in sight,
like kids screaming from too much fun
or from being murdered,
hard to tell from over the fence.
Like a business of ferrets eating your final meal.
Each morning I light a candle, sit in a blue club chair
and begin the meltdown procedures.
I had the job once of ringing the E-flat bell
every time someone died. There was a long list.
My wrist got tired. My ear bones got confused.
Some of us are no good at making money,
piano tuner turned cookie inspector,
forklift driver turned bank teller masseur,
phlebotomist turned postage stamp licker.
Through it all despair is there, a fine friend.
I’ve learned to abide like a shower curtain,
like a blue pebble at the bottom of a turtle tank,
like a microphone with her lips pressed close.
Never a kiss, just a garlic gust to wrap myself in.
Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. The Builtas have lived in Illinois since the 1830s, although one strand moved to Kansas in the late 19th century and then Texas in the 1920s. Brian’s work has been published in North of Oxford, Hole in the Head Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly and 2River View, among others.