Change of Address by Deborah Paredez

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 10, 2017   Change of Address   Deborah Paredez

Rate your pain the physical therapist instructs and I am trying not to do what they say women do lowballing the number trying hard not to try so hard to be the good patient scattered assurances lining the aisles like dead petals and me left holding nothing but what's been emptied out obviously I am over- thinking it when I settle on someplace in the middle six or seven times a week I walk past the street vendor on Broadway and say nothing while eyeing the same pom-topped hat the physical therapist asking me now for the name of that Chinese place where I sometimes go asking for the patient just before me a street vendor in need of a cheap massage as I lay the plain wreckage of my shoulders in the shallow hollows the street vendor's body has left on the padded table in the center of the story I sometimes read to my girl a cap seller sleeps under a tree's shade waking to find the monkeys in the branches above have plundered his wares he waves his hands shakes his fists until his rage makes him throw his cap to the ground and the monkeys mimic him and down float his caps his fury finally fulsome enough to restore what he's lost you've got to find another way to move the physical therapist modeling for me the poses to mimic assuring her I won't move what's left of the heavy boxes later unpacking the last of them I learn about the woman who once lived here Charlotte who twisted the cap and shook out the pills Charlotte who swallowed and slipped into sleep in her last act of volition here in this bedroom where the westward windows go on longing for dawn and I am trying to move in a new way to pull the mess of sloughed hair from the bathtub drain to move in the space of another's suffering scrub the caked toothpaste from the sink make a home in the space where suffering may meet its end.            Copyright © 2017 Deborah Paredez. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "One of the things I've appreciated most about moving back to New York City is the regular proximity to strangers and the attendant set of relations and responsibilities it requires of us especially during such desperate times. I had the good fortune of reading some of Ross Gay's poetry while working on this poem, and I found his exquisitely unbounded syntax to be an inspiring model for capturing our connectedness and accountability to one another. —Deborah Paredez   Deborah Paredez is the author of This Side of Skin (Wings Press, 2002). She teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.       Poetry by Paredez   This Side of Skin (Wings Press, 2002)  "Five Directions to My House" by Juan Felipe Herrera "Before the Airport, Sushi" by Tomás Q. Morín "We All Return to the Place Where We Were Born" by Oscar Gonzales Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038