Number Line
At 4:53pm Pacific Standard Time, I found the paramedics
pumping a man’s chest by the lake at Balboa Park.
At 5:06pm, the paramedics decided it was time
to place a white sheet over the dead man’s body:
With a soul, we are about 8 degrees warmer
than without one.
I rolled down my window. A man walked
his German Shepherd past our car.
I asked if he knew what was going on.
He said that a man had a heart attack.
Therapists say that when you leave your body
count things and name colors
to ground yourself to Earth:
One sugar gum tree,
leaves like bruises.
Three men in dark blue
uniforms kneel:
a pair of shoulders
pump and ricochet
off his trampoline chest.
My heart beats 981 times
per second and I pause
to pull a blade of grass
from a vein in my palm
& draw on it
with my finger tip
a number line
to send to the man
who died pretty much alone.
The roof
my boss made me
call the police
once
to let them know
a dead fetus fell
out of a woman
& she threw it onto the roof
the police determined
that it was not a fetus
but a lump of ground beef
yet it was hard to say
because the maintenance guy
already cleaned the roof
and NYC Sanitation
already picked up
the trash
the NYPD
assessed the roof for residue
& deli meats. Fetuses are not
bone rhinestones & cow fat
nor a sweat mark
on black tar. A fetus is
a halved-squirrel skinned
a boiled bird heart on your knee
i was
young and stupid and
didn’t yet know
Do Not call the police
who laughed
at the woman
wrapped in torn tarps
blue & strung
together
to hold her
split lip body
