Trauma Walks into a Bar
By Melissa Spohr Weiss
orders a rum and coke and lets out
its belly, fat with history. Trauma knows
more names than ancestry dot com.
Trauma heard dismembered cats
are turning up in your hometown –
Glenmeadows, Ben Lee Park.
Trauma peels photos from its wallet.
There are never enough hours
in a day, Trauma laments. Trauma
tells you it sleeps with the lights
on. It knows your secrets, jabbers freely
to those around you. Trauma likes to quote
Stalin: One death is tragedy; one million
is a statistic. Trauma has walked all
5.2 million square miles of Siberia.
It knows where your ancestors are buried,
knows which ones were drunks. Trauma births
trauma births trauma. Trauma knows
all the answers but doesn’t like to share.
Trauma shapeshifts. It’s your jeans
that don’t fit right. It’s the peanut stuck
in your throat. It’s the empty shot glass,
empty shot glass, empty shot glass…
Trauma doesn’t fuck around. It knows coyotes
probably got at the cats. Knows that even though
this is natural, it doesn’t make their carcasses
any less bloody. Trauma knows you hide
mickeys of Smirnoff in your closet. Trauma asks
you to think of someone other than yourself
for a change. Trauma dares you to take
another drink. It grows mad with hunger –
boils its leather belt into broth.
When you try to leave, Trauma insists
on picking up the tab.
Melissa Spohr Weiss (she/her) is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. Her poetry has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Riddle Fence, The Malahat Review, CV2, Prairie Fire, The Maynard, Oakland Arts Review, and elsewhere.
