As I Lay Dying

I am a fish.

I realize you may have heard this before. No, I’m not trying to
rip off some great American writer. I said I am a fish, not my mother, although my mother was also a fish.
Faulkner was using metaphor whereas I am actually a fish. When life leaves my body, I radiate color.

I am almost there—watch carefully as I gasp for air—gills flaring, adrenaline rush, open and shut, like a steam engine’s pumping,
only soundless, wordless, my mouth an ‘O.’
Who do you think I am, I ask, who do you think you are?

Ah (gasp) a rainbow.

**

Eliza Johnson’s Letter to Martha, May 1865

When my lungs feel heavy, I know it’s time
to slow down. Work has become too much
what with Robert most nights come home
so drunk he can hardly stand. I tried to wash
it out of him, put him in the wooden tub
right in the middle of the kitchen
took lye soap and scrubbed him like he was
a boy again. You should have seen him,
how still he went, all the loud inside
quieted down. I read him the Bible,
but don’t know much good got in.

The grasses have grown tall
and the roof needs patching. Expect I’ll send
Robert down to Mr. Thompson’s,
see if he can mend it. Thought it best
I rest rather than trim the yard,
get better quick so I can join you
and Father in Washington. The cough
that’s shadowed me for weeks has begun
to recede, but I feel a damp
residue. My throat is a river.
When I snore, I’m told, I gurgle.

This morning the sound of the slamming door
reminded me of your father, how he’d come
running in with his face red and hair wild,
talking so fast I had to set him
a glass of warm milk, get his boots off
and his feet near the fire. Soothe him, my dear.
Let him hold cloth before it’s been stitched.
The nation has soured, brother turned against
brother, yet don’t burden him with grand visions.
Remind him, he is a plain man from Tennessee
and too much will not be expected.