Sick Note

Adam Tavel

Please excuse Petunia for misplacing herself. Few escape the hinterlands unscathed, untamed, limping back to tell us how lost tribes pray. Please excuse her from the boardroom’s chipper glare, its pivot in these uncertain times, the thin condolences for her miscarriage. Her absence from the midday campus fun-run is solely a result of staff like her being—and thus unable to support—charity. Please pardon the mess of her princess hair fanned on the riverbank, grey-green and clotted as kelp, for she only half-wanted to drown, wine-flushed and swimming in moons. Excuse her waistband, eyebrows, eyeteeth, and chin scar from growing up with a herd of brothers, who all smelled like Wyoming. They pushed her from the barn loft for calling scrapple what cowards do to pigs. Please excuse every fleshy millimeter of her tongue, as it flops and rolls, defying the mercury jammed under it. Sweet Petunia, it can’t be done, even with two good hands, no one can hold that head and make her nod.

ADAM TAVEL is the author of six books of poetry, including Rubble Square (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2022). The recipient of the Richard Wilbur Award, Permafrost Book Prize, and Robert Frost Award, his recent work appears in AGNI, Berkeley Poetry Review, The North American Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Southeast Review.