Page 36 - WTp Vol. VII #9

ar Dugan
Last Dispatch
After Partial Resection
I try not to imagine / your real color / when they removed pieces of you / carefully, trying not to wake me. / I can’t help but think of you, / now and forever. / It would be easier if you were completely gone, / to forget. But, I still see you / as bright white and me dark ether / in our best picture together. / Have you forgotten me, Sliver, That Which Still Remains? / Say: I have so many questions. / Ask: Did you lose sight and sensation like me?
/ Say: The cells that you multiply / were killing us, but thriving us too, /
like addiction. / Ask: Did your complexion change / when you breathed for the first time on your own, Sliver? / Say: You are a newborn curling slowly to sleep. / Ask: When air was gas instead of liquid, / did it make you cry / tears of milk? / Say: Defense has no color. / Ask: What was it like / seeing light for the first time, Sliver? / Say: I can’t remember that far back. / Ask: Did it hurt / to feel the lamp for the first time, / not knowing how to blink? / Say: Everybody likes a clean slate. / Ask: Did you know to wince / before the needle broke skin? / Say: Write your name: Sliver. / Ask: Did you know that what you had wasn’t skin? / Say: Erase. Ask: How about now? / Say: Erase. / Ask: Did it feel / like you would get to start over / and over? / Say: Repeat.
Dugan earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. His poetry can be seen or is forthcoming in a number of literary magazines and reviews, most recently Salamander. His poem “The Creation of a Man” was nominated for AWP’s Intro Journal Awards Project. He has read poetry for Redivider and Ploughshares, and currently teaches literature and writing at Emerson College and Wheaton College in Massachusetts.
27