Mouth

Your mouth was a torment to me
           and I came within a hair
of telling you so.
           Your laughing mouth, on that
video you sent me. Specifically, your 
            delight, in a glittering wave,
singing karaoke
            Honky Tonk Woman in your truck
to your women’s ice hockey 
           team—bobbing back and forth
in your white oxford cloth button down
           and loosened red tie—
And the green dots everywhere. Your
           online engagements.
The sacral prana 
            flowing through
and over me, even
            at that distance,
on my tiny screen.

           I was next to the cement
floor of the peripeteia,
           where weeks before
my brother, visiting
            the same cousin
in silvery, wind-beaten Beaufort, 
           North Carolina,
nearly bled out at the foot
           of the bed, a jagged glass
in his right hand. Were it not  
           for the crash, Tipper
would not have found
           him till morning.

I’m not clear on why men
            like you can take me
down so completely.
            Why I think it would
be amusing.
           You’ve put me down
from the get-go. Craving
           is a hard mistress—a hard and
charismatic mother—.
           Ask my brother.

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“In Aristotle’s Poetics a peripeteia is a reversal of fortune, a ‘change by which the action veers round to its opposite.’ Every person standing by observing an alcoholic hopes for enough drama to help them wake up but not enough to kill them. According to twelve-step wisdom, this ‘hitting bottom’ is essential to recovery. There are many kinds of addictions, however, some new to us in this cultural moment—online dating, for example, and the lure of getting completely daft over a stranger’s curated self-representation. As laughable as it seems, this kind of thing can get very dangerous. Danger is the topic of this poem, and the bond between sister and brother.”
—Dana Roeser