Wires stream from his scalp— all the primary
colors like the tracks of the toy maze in the intake office
he pushed each wooden bead along, talking,
smiling when the woman behind the desk snuck
him two Hot Wheels cars, when he walked against
my warning to her knees. Now the EEG tech
wraps his head in gauze, guides the tangle of wires
though a sleeve that hangs down his back. This
will be his burden for the next ten hours, at his side
while he sleeps, the ends feeding the machine’s
giant cord. Tonight, you’re a superhero, the tech says,
but he won’t look up. It scares me, this new stoicism,
the not letting me touch him when mummified again
by medicine and its machines. Even when I wrap
him in his favorite blanket, lift his saddled head and lay
it on his home pillow, he doesn’t look at me. He barely moves.
The common betrayal of the life he loves,
he swallows.
LANE FALCON’s poems have been published in American Poetry Journal, The Carolina Quarterly, The Chattahoochee Review, Harbor Review, The Journal, New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, Qu, Rhino, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry and more. Her manuscript “Deep Blue Odds” was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize, and semi-finalist for the 2022 Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize and the Inaugural Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Prize. She lives in Alexandria, VA with her two children and dog.
REBECCA PYLE, named at birth for Daphne du Maurier’s and Hitchcock’s masterpieces, Rebecca, is both writer and artist whose artwork and writing are in Fugue, The Chattahoochee Review, Muse/A Journal, JuxtaProse, The Menteur, Cobalt Review, The Hong Kong Review, New England Review, Gargoyle, The Kleksograph, and The Penn Review. Pyle has lived the past decade or two in Utah, not terribly far from the often cloud-draped Great Salt Lake and its many small islands continually hosting migrating birds. Her artwork has appeared on covers of over a dozen journals, and within many others. Website: rebeccapyleartist.com
