Poetry
Routing
Jeanine Hathaway
These tangles and plaques say Alzheimers. Requiescat in pace,
the brain of Sister N. sits in a container. Formalin has fixed it
for research, nothing more for her but the clear and eternal. Now
imagine a brain in a plastic tub shipped on the UPS truck next to my
high-fashion catalog choice, the scarf Ill discover so fringed it tangles
with itself, an unforeseeable annoyance. The truck, a modest brown,
bears down the snowy streets, an icon of fulfillment, chock
full of the consequence of choice, and better, of follow-through.
I gave up a life of promise, simplicity, direction, and chose
or was chosenI want it both waysto choose me.
In a decade it may be my brain in a bucket, but now Ive
complicated enough by lingering over a page in private and
ordered myself the scarf thats modeled loosely-woven,
shimmering, unaware from the picture how it ends or what it
wedges safely in a brown truck plowing up my two-way street.