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in the FREE PDF file
2013 poetry chapbook

How a Bullet
Behaves

    How a Bullet Behaves, by Cara Losier Chanoine     How a Bullet Behaves, a  Cara Losier Chanoine book You can also order this
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for the book How a Bullet Behaves
Nursing Home Ballet

Cara Losier Chanoine

Margery forgets that she uses a walker.
We find her in the hallways,
clinging to the wall, trailing timid footsteps.

We introduce Clea to her husband once a week,
when he visits.
She looks up at us with question marks in her pupils
as we blot her lipstick and thread her arms
through the sleeves of a fresh sweater.

The building heaves with the labor
of interconnected machinery.
The oxygen tank hoses tangle with catheter cords,
straining against the clammy grasp of death,
peeling back its grip, finger by finger.

For Walter, the shower room is a boxing ring,
and we deflect his fists with open palms
while the lukewarm water
slips through the loose wrinkles of his skin.
Right jab, uppercut, left hook, knockout.
We hold him upright by his bent elbows
when he breaks the surface of reality,
dripping and bewildered.

The nursing home is never quiet,
because the people who live here lie awake
with bones pressed too tightly against their skin,
trapped in withered shells that used to call themselves
carpenters and postal workers and dancers.
These people lie awake because they know
that the death coming for them
is less abstract than it has ever been before.

When Henrietta’s call light goes off at three AM,
I enter her room quietly.
I look into her watery eyes and I hold her hand,
because this small comfort is all that I can offer to someone
who is waiting for the curtain to fall for the final time.
I calculate the number of ticks that it will take
for the clock’s second hand to hit sunrise,
and I count them to her until her grip on my hand
becomes less desperate.
I try to read her fate from the wrinkles on her palm,
but I can’t, so I count the seconds
as they syncopate with the rhythm of her breathing.
The moon shines an empty spotlight on the floor tiles,
but the ballerina’s legs are broken.
There is nothing here but oxygen tanks and catheter bags,
call lights and damp pillows,
and people,
who used to know how to dance.



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