Jonathan Aibel
Image by Zahid H Javali from Pixabay
Jonathan B. Aibel is a poet who spends his days wrestling software to the ground as an engineer specializing in quality and testing. His poems have been published, or will soon appear, in Ocean State Review, Soundings East, Pangyrus, Sweet Tree Review, Rogue Agent, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. He has studied with Lucie Brock-Broido, David Ferry, and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Jonathan lives in Concord, MA with his family.
Palliation
how hollow the room,
all flats and lacuna, susurrant,
the crumpled giant on the banked bed
as if by the river,
laying his burden down. I was afraid
of him – no – I am still afraid,
even in the sheets, cannula-tubed
air, more sweet than mine,
should I be afraid of or for,
should I be overfull, of memory,
as I wait my watch, I should weep
hearing his breath, hearing my watch
beat and stutter, break and begin
again, bound by blood to this man,
to my brothers, our voiceless vigil,
as if at Snowbird watching him ski
some terrifying steep trail ahead
of me, the windowed sky silvered,
wall shadows as if of Douglas fir
the morphine drip, that yowling
yodel song he sang on the lifts,
from Lucerne to Weggis on,
Ho-diddy-day-o, Ho-day-o,
stern lawyer of my life full throat
tremolo down the hill, while I trembled
at the top. It echoes in the trees, down
the halls to drown in the clatter of monitors
and the sighs of nurses
unhorsed by exhaustion.
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