dean hel

four poems

A list of accomplishments of the year

1. being alive

2. holding a pen

3. trying

4. having kept the ability to communicate without screaming. keeping my voice even. spreading my lips to articulate each word, then showing teeth. being able to respond to the how’s your year?s without grabbing my interlocutor by the ears and pulling at the flesh until a piece of it remained in each hand, but, if I did, I would bring the torn lobe to my mouth and whisper—but very evenly, very calmly—my mother died. my mother died.

5. showing up to work to teach Girl, Interrupted, a book about depression and suicide, to teach Hamlet, a book about grief, depression, and suicide, to teach Hanif Abdurraqib, who writes “I touch my fingers to the hips of this vast & immovable grief.”

6. holding a cold beer while the late October Texas sun bakes me tenderly, watching people in costumes gnaw on turkey legs and caramel apples, sipping in their joy by osmosis, apart and among them for one long, blessed, meady second.

7. getting up each morning and putting on the old suit of my body, tugging on the parts that don’t fit anymore, cutting others, looking at the sweaty, crusty imprint of myself on the bed sheets.

8. waiting for my colleague to return from an urgent trip back home, tongue heavy nails on cuticles thoughts caught in a loop, and then, when she gets back with her 90-year-old ailing mother in tow, widening my jaw sputtering forth oh, that’s so good. Oh, that’s so good. That’s so good.

9. eating good food, dreaming, pissing, honking at fools on I-45, laughing, spilling milk, wasting time, making the same mistakes, allowing myself any and all abuses, including punishment, despising everyone, dunking my head under water.

10. reading numbers on the clock even though the time is: after.

11. listening to two dozen people a day telling me about the hardships of caring for aging parents, witnessing in their eyes, but as a far-away sailor with a long spyglass, the unshakable belief that time does not exist, screaming from my ship something they cannot hear.

12. having stopped crying, at everything. Thinking every other second about crying. Finger-jabbing at the leaking eye of every cretin in the area.

13. formulating the phrase I am an orphan in my head without ever saying I am an orphan to anyone who asks about my parents ever not even once.

14. living an ocean away, never being able to come back ever again, coming back anyway, crossing the same airport, waiting outside with my heavy-duty luggage, craning my stupid neck above the heads of strangers anyway, mouth gin-dry, heart knocking against my teeth, watching cars after cars after cars stopping and going.

The Ring

My brother and i told the hospital safekeeper
—you know, the treasure collector
the one whose riddles you must answer
to collect the things
of the patients
who won’t be returning for the room service
nor the quality of the bed neither–

we told him ---------- ----------.

He gave us 4 rings
in a plastic baggy
3 rings fit 3 matchstick fingers
protruding from 3 of the littlest nieces
1 fit me

I liked it so much I made a copy
with my own skin

get close and see
stick you eye there, in the secret peephole
a considerate black onyx made in the crown
by jumping ship some time ago*

see for yourself the pretty red band
I grew there
(just in case)

now the hand wearies with the ghosts of the rings in plastic baggies

the knuckles shed heavyflakes one by one until the bones show through but
don’t worry
the ring i’ll hold
until every stone’s gone wherever stones go and even then i won’t take it to get fixed
fuck getting fixed

give me all your hollow jewels to hold and i’ll swallow them all i’ll fill
the spaces inside with their golden rubbish i’ll shed myself to pieces until they shine
through the bones i’ll sign all the
forms with her name
and those without

i’ll tell my brother
i’ll tell him ---------- ----------
and he won’t think of the rings, of a ring
he won’t think of the hospital safekeeper
he’ll think instead of the man we saw there in the waiting room
who received a letter
he couldn’t read
who asked what it meant
who said another name
who we left there with no answers no baggies no rings no brother

*How long ago?
Before the hospital of course
In the i’ll-drop-it-by-the-jeweler’s-next-time time
And see
How you bask in it even now

Inheritance

Listen: no treasure was ever cherished more
than the bag of frozen peas at the bottom of my mom’s freezer
16 years they spent bejeweled in white
glowing with the knowledge that they never fed
5 kids
no longer kids
no longer home
no longer peering in and yelling back there’s nothing to eat
Look (imagine): one emerald lying there on the tongue-sticking ice
diamonded into being by layers of accumulated wealth (the pork shoulders
and the beef tongues and the ice cream sandwiches for the kids)
bought one cold morning to ward off the other cold mornings and kept
securely in the
forgetful flash of some instinct
Now look—I cherish them, the peas
I think about them at least
and of the freezer they’ll seal at the dump to prevent kids from climbing in
(I suppose)
and to prevent them from
holding the thawed jewels
and put a single one upon their tongue
and feel it, just below the white film
all it was that she put there

What’s Left

we dumped heaps of clothes inside the donation bins even though it said to place clean & folded clothes inside plastic bags we didn’t read the sign and in any case we had no bags nor time to clean and fold clothes before we’d spread all of them on the table we held each item we looked we smelled we touched we frowned we discarded all it was imperative to get rid of all of it (only i took some and already they changed in my closet they lost the smell they lost the specialness they just look old thriftshopped) we had to get rid of them all all of it inside the donation boxes even the stained even the ones she bought two sizes too small because she still bought clothes for the body she had at 40 at 45 even at 55 and that body liked fashion it liked sexy red brassieres it liked animal print even though the new body preferred pajamas and sweatpants still it bought the pink spaghetti strapped camisole she could never resist a promo-tion could never bypass a deal we packed bagfuls of deals in trash bags and we overstuffed the containers until one of them refused to turn anymore my sister said shit I broke it and we were down to one and we had so many more clothes inside the trunk of my brother’s car and we couldn’t just leave them at the foot of the containers not even in trash bags already my arms held nothing already my palms tingled with nothing already my mind stammered on the what’s left what’s left whatsleft