& miss
a speeding cab
by inches. I hoard
anything that will kill me:
loose change, denial so refined
it could talk a cat off a fish cart or
a fasting monk into a full belly, the royal I.
even the deathwishes now are kind.
bipolar disorder, the med student
said, like she was rattling off
a line of poetry, her eyes
a vista exposed above
a powder blue mask,
braids swept like
an ocean over
a salt-licked
shore.
I let her
see me like this:
Adidas joggers for
seven days straight, logo
worn into a squashed insect.
her paperwork is spread like an
offering: heavy smoker, one pack a day
& dancing behind my eyes, this lyrical
penchant for excessive rationale: but I stopped
shooting dope, I haven’t had a bead of booze in five years, I
deserve some kind of relief, don’t I? St. Jude,
patron saint of lost causes, is in my ear,
pitching me the riches of martyrdom,
breath gummy & glib, mistaking
my fever for passion. I swat
him away as if he were
a bee blundering for
a blush. evasion
is often godly
intervention
without
God.
the sun hangs
like a bottlecap half
-buried in sand, the N
train thrumming, half-full,
its steady fluorescent flicker
like a voice that’s about to break
—& when it does, I’m back in a cathedral
under white sheets, my breath-damp cavern,
cotton clenched between my teeth so tight I can taste
each thud in my chest. my med student is here, her neck
smooth as ivory, tall as the Tower of Babel, so close to God
it must be toppled. I want to hurry back to the home
-less man, hand him my carton, cellophane
wrapper gleaming in the glow of the just
rising moon, laugh a hearty laugh, our
hands caked with grease, cigarette
tips winking at the dark end of
the train tracks, kiss him on
his face like it’s a crucifix,
streetlamps blooming
above us as sudden
& predictable as
a reflection.
the train stops
where it’s supposed
to stop, my key fits where
it’s supposed to fit. forgive me
I am still learning to love
this body.

Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Pushcart-nominated poet, organizer, and educator. He was named a finalist in Autumn House Press’s 2020 Chapbook Contest, the Mississippi Review’s 2021 Prize for Poetry, and the 9th Annual Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, and was longlisted for the 2020 Palette Poetry Emerging Poet Prize. He has previously served as Assistant Director for Polyphony Lit‘s Summer Scholars Program, and currently runs Word is Bond, a reading series that benefits bail funds and mutual aid organizations, in conjunction with the Adroit Journal, where he also serves as a poetry reader and contributor. His work has appeared or will soon in Guernica, wildness, North American Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, THRUSH, Passages North, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Dilla.