A Fevers of the Mind Poetry Showcase for Aaron Wiegert

Let the Sound Come to You

There was a boy nearing graduation, 
With great acceleration, college on the horizon,
First in his family to

--he was pulled from one side
Of the gravel, down into the ditch
& never made curfew. 

Mom and dad cried and tried to find
Meaning and with an open heart
They gave the body of his car 
To the graduating class. 

The mangled frame sat on the back 
Of a flatbed’s slow tow around the town, 
In the homecoming parade, as boys and girls

Hammered the broken body without the joy
Or excitement of tires or glass 
Or an engine’s rush of gas. 

Candy was tossed to the children,
The football game was lost or won, 
But the blind eyes of spraypainted metal still

Lets the sound come to you. 


More Than a Carnivore Could Bear    (as told by my grandma about her husband's childhood)

He had a dog, part-wolf, 
Whose hunger was epic,
As his family had little to eat. 

It had been weeks
Since they had meat, 
More than a carnivore could bear.

So they collected wages
To calm their craving.  

Upon the block, his family watched
The Butcher stuff hot dogs, 
And decided on one each. 

Mother carried the paper package 
In her coat, and unwrapped 
It in the kitchen. 

Imagine Part-Wolf’s suspicion 
At the scent of fresh meat. 
Mother took the plate away.

Her trip to the hot plate
Was smooth, so much that
She slid and the meat flew 

Up and into the eye 
Of Part-Wolf’s teeth,
Snap and swallow, before

A scrum or tug-of-war. So went
The meat drought, 
Along with the Depression,

Until it didn’t matter
What dog they ate. 

Climb the Heights

We were just
Impossible
Obstacles

Standing, watching either end
Of the Valley
Of a barren marriage. 

And in the Valley, walls so tall
Only a whisper of dreams
Could climb the heights

To pass where escape lies
As a basin, 
Lush with sap sweet
Water, if only enough to skim, 

In this impossible proportion 
To the dry, flat clime
Where time pulses like the night sweats
Of a neon saint with a circus in tow

Medics and Missing House Numbers

The passage of choice is a memory mirrored, 
Not a hallway necessity like a locked firehose cabinet. 
I regret not having a pass but had to see 
The red lights on the ceiling that are still squealing. 

Smash glass? No, sir. It’s no funhouse really, 
Just an extinguisher taking advantage 
Of the frame’s weak woodgrain. I don’t know
What you found, I can’t attest to that anymore 
Than the worm tracks on autopsied back fat. 

The distance between alone and together?
The greater the better, bigger pills with more color. 
How can you swallow a photograph taken 
At the moment of decision? There’s no map
To get back, even to itself– useless. 

Yes, there was a camera but don’t mind the process,
Exposure and acid and… Relief in the form of a Note:
There’s no need for numbers in real life. There,
Did you hear that? The sirens have been lost for hours,
Spaced out, in motion like an excellent illusion, even

If it’s too good to be true, just know there’s no framework
For feeling, true for daily dosage, one by one
I’ve watched the house numbers fall as the ambulance 
Drones around in concentric circles and I can still see you. 

The Corpse Flower

The Botanical Center is a replica of the terrestrial, 
Feeling lunar, artificial, a big bubble off the freeway.

The attraction was the bloom of the Corpse Flower, 
A giant, imported and set far enough away 
To be bothered by only a live feed camera. 

We paid admission and waited days, 
Married all the while. 

Standing on a footbridge in a controlled
Climate, I felt like an astronaut
On a movie set. 

While away, we checked in on the live stream, 
Awaiting the hamburger-scented bloom. 

Can a camera capture other senses?
We watched in case her jaws would fall open
Like the maw of a busted melon. 

With uncertainty, time grew slow and meaning swelled. 
Attention to the plant became a sheen

To preserve the moisture of memory, 
Like the head of a room-centered bust. 
And the live stream crept as though our watching

Would beckon a gardener, to unmask this plant
And reveal the great flower’s teeth. It wasn’t to be. 

Pictures were taken to preserve the day
And populate dating profiles, there was great momentum
For leaving, then there was the gift shop

But I only wanted to put my face to the bloom,
And Inhale the scent of our abortion’s birth.