Judith Skillman
Amerika’s Pain Shoppe
The chessboard’s grown large under the ether and life-sized knights in body armor—virtual, their daggers made by the master blade smith, cooled in a metal bath with bits of manganese and tungsten. Yes, says the owl with smarts, it’s all virtual, creamy king and queen gone cold with chills at opposite ends from one another on the board. I haul myself along with my left arm, on my stomach, me a woman soldier in the map of Syria with something broken—my right shoulder blade. The scapula, they call it here. The fracture like a highway between the plains on the x-ray fixed to the gaudy light box. I drag myself toward the lintel, try to cross the transom. A bit more traction…frozen-shoulder the stained glass door open. Neon colors paired with bevels to deliver prisms on hardwood where shag-sixties rug meets 19th century oak. Glean the answer to the question I wanted trade my life for. Not why suffering so much as where’s oxygen? Want to freshen up the old-fashioned way in the glare of single star shining outside the waiting room, my broken toes caught between frame and door, just short of the alley. There grass grows through asphalt, and earth’s abandoned coal yards vegetate. There horses—green—graze among hillocks of trash, white-blazed, ready to spook at the trespass of man.
Judith Skillman’s new book is Premise of Light, Tebot Bach. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust and the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Zyzzyva, and other journals. Visit www.judithskillman.com
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