Jessica Bozek

[Hospice]

the fog
that slips in
the fog
we sleep in
the fog
we don’t sleep in


*


[Poetry dream]

To save her from assassination I must revise the U in ruin to the A in
rain, a lesser form of erosion.


*


[Final days]

When I try to recall what we all looked like, I see the waffle weave of
a white blanket, the faded carmine paisley of sheets across the surface
of her body in different beds, the hospital, her bedroom, the hospital
again, and finally her living room, I see the dark spots on her face.
But I can’t see anyone else’s face.


*


[Mooring]

to look at her to look at her to not look away

*



[Looking away]

over the roofs
across the alley
along the fence rails
into the neighbors’ windows
under the furniture for a lost pacifier
down the thin wales of my corduroy leg


*

[Palliative care]


If you know you are dying, then you have a chance to manage it, or
to enlist others. My mother’s children managed her dying. She could
no longer talk.
And even this word managed feels wrong.


*


[Grief toolkits for hire]

oh look, heart:
weights away!


*

[My memory isn’t enough]

Jessica Bozek is the author of The Tales (Les Figues, 2013) and The Bodyfeel Lexicon (Switchback, 2009), as well as several chapbooks: Squint into the Sun (Dancing Girl), Other People’s Emergencies (Hive), Touristing (Dusie), and cor·re·spond·ence (Dusie). She runs the Small Animal Project Reading Series and lives with her small family in Cambridge, MA.