The Future Has Poetry: “Tuesdays”‘ by R.C. Blenis

The boot descends. The wet thud
of sole on skin, the small suck
of leather peeling from flesh;
the metronome of Mondays.
Air squeezed sideways through a mouth
that used to make music. The wheeze,
the wet whistle, the catch between blows,
pressure pressing into softness, the body
beaten to a beat, a blood-beat drumming down
to this dumb thud, this pulp, this pulse.
This. Only this.

Tuesdays crack bone. The clean, crisp crack
of a molar’s piccolo split, a pop,
then the slow grind starts: a grim grit
of tooth-shard on tooth-shard, the wet,
crushing crunch of cartilage, calcium
collapsing into chalk, a coarse scrape
of splinter on slick, scored enamel.

And the factory whistle shrieks:
a blade of sound that splits the air
and leaves no wound. The telescreen
chitters, a static-spit of numbers, hiss
of last week’s steel production, the tinny tick
and tally of a chocolate ration cut by half.

Somewhere, boots on stone; the metered clip
and strike of patrols arriving, leaving,
their rhythm clean, their purpose stone,
a sound that never slows, never stops
to listen to the sound beneath the sound,
the wet work drumming on and on and on.

And the world grinds on.
And the stone is stone.
And the boot descends.

There was a name. It sang—
like breath, like—
thhhh.
Like sssuh. A soft sound. Gone.

There were other sounds. The hiss of rain
on glass. The sssong. The word that was
like love or mother or the hummm of home.
The taste of—
what? that sweet—
that sun-thing. Round. Not stone.
Not boot. The other thing. The—
uhhh.

The boot knows boot. The stone knows stone.
The face forgets the word for sun. For song.
For—
Thud.

No name. No song. No sun.
No sound but this wet suck, this dumb
thump, this blood-beat in the pulp and mud.
This.
This.
This.

R.C. Blenis is a nursing instructor and poet from Atlanta, Georgia. His work investigates how bodies and language break down under pressure. He spent fifteen years working in emergency and mental health care. Find him @hillbillypilgrim.

Image: taliesin, morguefile.com

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