Borrowing Dead

African American Review, Spring, 2004 by Ariono-jovan Labu

Borrowing Dead

   She never looked so fragile, so frail
   pale beige, spirit like complexion
   drowned in frame of pasty curtains
   albino floors
   & nude walls with imitation Van Goghs.
   Her limbs, iron coat hangers
   draped in a burgundy polka-dot apron,
   chest heaving like dehydration
   on emergency respirators
   eyes sealed mute
   half paralyzed waist down.
   Momma simply told us
   you were in deep dreams
   thinking of Grandpa or Cuba--
   i took you for borrowed away.

   Had only been four months
   since your release from Thomas General
   i wore my gray pin-striped
   church get up that Saturday afternoon
   after we settled you back in
   half your memory & speech eroded,
   consciously--couldn't recall
   our trips to the park, signature dishes,
   family or friends'faces hung on walls
   tucked in heritage albums
   & noon from night even.
   Dr. Shortz promised us if strictly following
   his directions to let you get proper rest
   & taking those double-doses
   of chemo prescriptions he issued
   you'd gain a few solid years back
   clearing all bacteria eating at your liver
   which migrated to the left breast
   then finally a legacy virus snuck into
   the back door of your heart.

   A luke day, May 3rd, '91
   i blamed cousin Alicia first--
   left your in-home care provider
   nodding off in hibernation
   dry hung from drinking & chiefin'
   eight nights a week strong,
   fetal hugged to the couch like an overdose
   & you falling from the wool braille recliner
   chasing a knock at the door,
   forgetting reasonable capabilities
   a woman in her mid-sixties
   with forever cancer & tissue limbs could handle.
   Pictured you squirming
   as a roasting worm
   on noon summer pavement,
   gasping in convulsions
   like beached marine life
   muscles cramping, slugging to answer
   a message never heard.

   i was young once too,
   snotty noised
   chewing food like cows on cud
   & couldn't mention death
   without shuddering in chasms of arctic.
   Back at Thomas,
   wasn't no flowers
   or get well kites outside kinfolk,
   friends half century in promise
   paid no visits to
   brush your rusty dandelion mane,
   cradle your ginger palms in atonement,
   kiss your flushed cheeks,
   tell you it's all Jesus.

   Last time

   let us in Critical Care,
   in your last steps in Autumn
   when your heart
   beat on borrowed time,
   lips moved in murmurs
   like Baptist tongues.
   i knew why
   your health had eroded,
   blamed the incompetent
   unsympathetic staff.
   Figure they must have handled you
   like some unruly convalescent
   acting out Hitler's agenda.

   & not two days
   following the memorial
   did our family seams
   began to unravel.
   Uncles aunties, brothas sistas
   wars
   to possess heirlooms
          memorabilia,
   open resentments in devil tongue.
   & knows if i was to play God
   would never neglect the sunshine
   fishing worldly vanities,
   would duplicate echoes of Spring
   cause you'd be my Lazarus.

Ariono-jovan Labu is currently an undergraduate student attending San Francisco State University, He considers his format and style to be urban contemporary. Although this is his first publication, he has served on the editorial staffs of three literary magazines and has participated in many writer's workshops and poetry slams at local cafes.