Facts Unknown

Good morning stairs this is the way of coming down
((faces in agony)) the bracing rails either side as step by
one more step gingerly I ((faces in ecstasy)) make way,
taking only the required number of, no side trips
straightaway ((pain is intimacy)) to coffee to chair
with ottoman & feet ((pain in invitation)) off the ground —
Last night my body hummed white noise,
((spike, throb, wave)) lit up at every nerve ending,
touch me I am a plasma globe ((undulation in stardust))
whose lightning follows your hand and some days a vibrato of glow
other days ((trepidation)) an orchestra of intentions gone awry sing me to sleep
my hands go numb and I shake them until my fingers reemerge
from snow But how many plush vials shall I give the nurse today
and how many possibilities will return and — Hello, today,
the longer I stand the longer I can stand standing until later
((pain I can eroticize might distract from pain I can’t))
when I can’t stand any longer and all of this invisible
and the migraines seem to have subsided for now
and my knees hips elbows shoulders clavicle
((the persistent chainsaw buzz that frays))
wrists fingers fingertips thighs calves ankles feet
dissolve into ache and the parade of specialists still say
I don’t know. ((some days your body keeps you close to home))

Cati Porter is a poet, editor, and community arts facilitator. She is founder and editor of literary journals Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry and Inlandia: A LiteraryJourney, and the author of My Skies of Small Horses Seven Floors Up, the chapbooks small fruit songs,most delicious, The Way Things Move The Dark, what Desire makes of us with illustrations by her sister Amy Payne, and The Body, Like Bread. Her third full-length collection, The Body at a Loss, is forthcoming in 2019 from CavanKerry Press. She lives with her family in California’s Inland Empire, where she is the Executive Director ofthe Inlandia Institute, a regionally-focused literary nonprofit.