Grief, a Hangover by Catherine Arra

Circular, circuitous. Unmapped.

Requires kegs of time, ten-toed tight roping 

to miss the wall, skip the fall, gutter-banging brains.

You can’t lose the headache, crotch ache,

the heavy-footed hungover hunger. The loss.

You stagger grocery aisles, drive snail-pace slow in

your own funeral procession, horns honking behind.

Cursed and dazed, you move in sludge.

You think you are speeding. You almost want the cliff

to arrow into space, hang glide down.

Weightless, aloft, free.

But you keep on. Keep on chasing ghosts,

feeding pain, order another bourbon. 

One more shot won’t make a difference

any more than one more phone call, one more kiss.

One more roll under the sheets of delusion.

It will be better this time, you say.

But it never is, no matter how tight you hold the pen,

the wish, the full-throttle control of authorship.

You can’t rewrite the story.

Catherine Arra is the author of Deer Love (Dos Madres Press, 2021), Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein (Finishing Line Press, 2020), (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and three chapbooks. Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com