2 POEMS
Kevin Oberlin
MAL
| Situation | Automatic Thought | Physical Response | Emotional Response | Cognitive Distortion | Changed Thought |
| back on Shadow, but that was before the war | no longer my world | press my forehead to the margins, fly low | silence where survival’s concerned | and faith in ownership | lots of rocks look like home |
| a sack of money for a crate of goods, an exchange of containers | where we keep our bodies and what it felt like to inhabit them | I would most certainly like you to touch me | maybe with nostalgia | the package travels because we carry it | exchange is not change, but constant motion |
| what you break down, what you build | a family | your own quarters, your own bunk, your own cut | except when I conjure otherwise | a thing with roots can’t be moved, that’s the point | and I am in constant motion |
| fog and fuck sound mighty similar to my ear | maybe you should see what it feels like | I’ve kept some of your things in a trunk | not knowing you’re in love, a stronger thing by far | but why admit it? | skin, only a middle layer |
| shot in the shoulder again | take a bullet, you take someone’s burden off | also, it hurts | if I recover, expect me to get a few things off my chest | the tight pants improve my range of motion, asshole | don’t make me turn this ship around |
| bar fight | careful what you say next | a brown shirt, a brown coat | patience isn’t a virtue, she’s a bitch | fighting keeps the dust down | with my shoulder blades I know if I’ve got help behind me |
| in the black, what don’t matter comes clear | we’ll stop for supplies and make what repairs we can afford | to keep flying | like a crate buoyed by its cargo | life makes its own self interesting, bullet by burning bullet | you take the battle with you |
__
WASH
| Situation | Automatic Thought | Physical Response | Emotional Response | Cognitive Distortion | Changed Thought |
| I wake in our warm bed laughing | two bodies too far above any ground | grip the bed sheets, cocoon in the folds of your arms | something you said to assure me once, "Cover me." | as I attempt to balance our difference | the stars blink out behind our cumbersome shadows |
| your voice in my head makes me pilot of still spaces | if the water is empty, why seek a captain? | float like bodies do | loneliness, a myth space perpetuates | my fist against the chest of another | if I want to see you wear it, do the laundry |
| the way a leaf spins as it descends, crafting its erratic fall | where there isn’t any wind, there’s intuition | rudder right | people drop their baskets, look up at the sky | even a cloud, weighted with grief, desires the fall | a cyclone peppers the sky with leaves |
| when I’m driving I need for you to keep quiet | a car is a crude metaphor for flying | jam on the brakes, let the tires ejaculate gravel across the highway | sunlight transforms vapor into starlight in your hair | inability to wax romantic in light of certain facts | your arm across my chest when I stop suddenly |
| if you glue the dinosaurs to the dashboard, they will stop speaking | you love me because I give everything a voice | leave my toys where you could trip on them | adaptation necessitates movement | I am triceratops, and I want my food token | is the bond between our hands of earth or water? |
| after the evening is over, I will drive you home | our home | flip three switches, flood the trees with footlights | causes them to shiver | what was that you said just now? just before the breeze kicked up? | leaf on the wind |
__
"Mal" and "Wash" are based on characters from Joss Whedon's Firefly. These poems owe a debt to the innovation and input of [Leah Nielsen], who first incorporated charts from Margaret A. Caudill's Managing Pain Before It Manages You into poems.