By ERICA DAWSON
The month is February and that means
nothing because winter in Tampa is
the same as fall and spring so it could’ve
been easily Thoreau’s “September sun”
or Eliot’s “April is” blah blah blah.
My therapist is pushing mindfulness.
“Relax your shoulders, face, and guide your soft
attention to your breath. Release control.”
The voices that depressed people can hear,
can they be silence speaking just as clear,
articulate, and code-switching as I
was when I was still healthy enough to work?
Joaquin Phoenix puts his clown makeup on.
A tear falls. Here, the quiet says nothing
loudly. It sounds the same as a white person’s
nothing when they are eyeing me with What
will she do next? Does she even belong
here? Is she still here? Why won’t she just go?
Joaquin Phoenix has got himself a gun.
Joaquin Phoenix is losing his damn mind.
I have a lot of options when it comes
to films where characters are going mad.
There’s Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now breaking
the hotel mirror, Charlize Theron nude
in church in The Devil’s Advocate but I
want Phoenix dancing down the Bronx step street
in full clown face, red suit, and mustard vest,
to Gary Glitter’s “Rock ’n’ Roll (Part 2),”
his every kick and steady lurch and land
in dirty puddles splash because it makes
me think of playing high school basketball
and entering the gym to that same song.
The crowd, the layup line, first shot always
a brick off the backboard despite my height.
This is a fundamental memory.
The signs pointing to doing something right
and failing. Educated and I lost
my job. Bipolar and I cannot lose
my mind. The first responder says I’m safe.
Joaquin Phoenix is in the hospital.
I’m in my bedroom where I’ve tacked a sheet
over the window, ghetto blackout shade.
I live in the god fucking sunshine state.
It’s the pandemic. Counties, soon, will ban
Sula. A muscle memory is not
in your muscles, it’s really in your brain.
My horoscope says I’m a human lie
detector, that I hear the truths that whisper.
Erica Dawson is the author of three books of poetry, most recently When Rap Spoke Straight to God. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Orion, Revel, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals and anthologies. She lives in the Baltimore-DC area.
