Robert Okaji
Metastases
This is the story of a body and a man. A history of failure and whimsy. Of numbers and proliferation and electrical impulses oscillating without thought of consequence. The voice vanished. The body grew, and then lost itself. Thighs withered, overnight. Cells divided without invitation. This is bullshit, he says. I never believed in the Marlboro Man. But I wear boots, drive a pickup, and live in a ranch house with a blue dog. The driveway of crushed stone. Black vultures soar overhead. Dung beetles. Dew. Pancetta. Everything touches everything. What is a cough but an explanation? An expression of counted failure and cast-off reckonings? A dream, diminishment? Heart and hip. Mind and bliss. Left ventricle. A leaf. Body and man. Fractures and lesions. Refusals. That hole. The whole.
A Patient Noose
The man thought of spiraling towers, of concentric circles in nature, how they resembled his relationships, both failed and successful. Round and round, up, down and over. What is the use, he asked, of reflection or deflection, of shields and traps and Taylor Swift? I am that sullen soul in the fifth circle of Dante’s Hell. I am that scorpion lurking in the boot's shadow, a patient noose on a political t-shirt worn by a mad woman. If the treatments work, I will gather time, listen to those I once ignored, recover lost energy. If I regain my voice, I will sing.
Everywhere But Here
…or the leaf, twisting in its ecstasy. How does the man rectify such movement in light of his failure in simplicity, in reason: the junco at the frozen birdbath, chuck roast thawing on the counter. Ground glass nestled comfortably in his lungs. If I could insert myself into a particular vein in that leaf, he asks, would I enhance the wind, or merely disappear in the moment’s arc, a beginning, middle and end touching everywhere but here, on the south side of the window, looking out, looking in.
Robert Okaji was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, and lives, for the time being, in Indiana with his wife, stepson, and cat. His full length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press sometime in the near future (not posthumously, he hopes). His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review, Only Poems, Vox Populi, Evergreen Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Big Windows Review, The Night Heron Barks, Indianapolis Review, and other venues.
