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"Fjords"
My people are known for their depression,
hypersensitivity to rejection and acute awareness of pain.
Many of us, alcoholic.
Each day, a sense of dread.
Life, work, earth and death.
I try to get my bearings.
In my sleep I was clearing tables in Paris.
My people drink coffee all day and are
quiet in public, suspicious.
They prefer to die alone on the ice.
You must eat more fish, my doctor insists.
I prefer a bottle of painkillers, a purple hat,
a paper-bag full of cash and a ticket to a French city.
My ancestors are ice fisherman.
Any one of them could have been eaten by a bear.
I sit before a hole in the ice, line in hand.
Madness, alcoholism and suicide.
My people keep secrets at the cost of coherence.
Tell them something personal, or embarrassing,
they look away, nod, say, Uh Huh.
That's all. Came home one winter night to grandpa
in the kitchen standing at a slant. He named each object
with his finger: peaches, potato, hot water and bread.
A can of beer fell from his pants and pulsed onto the floor.
My people sleep too deeply to awaken. Like on the couch
drinking whiskey from a Pepsi can, escaping religion and poverty.
I am a realist. I believe in destiny. The world is feudal.
Futile. Foetal. Fatal. Brutal. Total. Half-finished.
—Sheryl Noethe
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