Betty Stanton — The Monarch Review
Apnea – Betty Stanton
Sunday, March 27, 2016 2:27 — 0 Comments
I listen to him breathing until he stops suddenly in a gagging gasp, then silence that stretches too long before he begins to breathe again. The doctors say it is complex – tissue in the back of his throat collapsing, relaxing when it ought to tighten, his brain sending the wrong messages to the muscles that control his breath. He was tested. Sleeping pills in a strange bedroom, the slick pads of monitors taped to his skin, each breath a line in a computer. Afterward, he slept with a machine, worried when he would twist and turn that the thick […]
What am I?
Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies
Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;
Scientists can't find me.
Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—
Remind me:
The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…
Tick, Tock: Divine me.
-- Richard Kenney
