Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): from blackbirds

it smells the same
and is
each time

blind

signs, but
Bernard can’t see
doesn’t even want
to see, any—

more than enough
suffering, glimpsed
in flashes of scent,
or hand on face not his own

around here, something radiates

near the incinerator, an underground
man, his back hunched
disfigurement he could
neither afford to
fix or let fester

words on a transistor
or bracketed tee-vee:
simple information:

this pill, now
that pill, when…

he chews the arm
of left-behind
eyeglasses, nervous
like a phrase out of Nietzsche,
her body lingers here, there
above or down a corridor, in
a ward far off,
a fake-perked nurse untying
gowns and tearing out
sutures and un—

telling her
my sister and i ride
elevators up,
down, declare
secret places
best for assurance

here everything’s going / got to be ok.

© Steve Halle 2008