Poetry Suite by Shira Erlichman
“Give me enough time
& I’ll anvil your kidneys, lose your memory for you.”
Poetry by Shira Erlichman
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Ode to Lithium #108: The Tiger
Every single tiger is special. Each one has feelings, thoughts, and dreams.
These tigers are not here by chance. They came to me looking for protection.
– “The Tiger and the Monk”
I call you Lithium in one fell swoop erasing your idiosyncratic taste. The one that clung to the roof of my mouth as if arguing with the path ahead. The one who bubbled in my empty gut, admonishing me like a mother for missing a meal.
I should call you Lithiums. The one whose skull came dented I pondered for a full five seconds. The one siamese-twinned to his brother, who with a fingernail I surgeoned.
In my dream you came back as tigers. I roamed through your bodies, salted orange. You had faces, sometimes kicked in sleep, twitching toward a kill. But when I moved through your forms, swishing the sea of your backs, you never harmed me. But you were never tigers. You were the one who preferred to bathe in the morning, the one who preferred to bathe at night.
When I wake up there’s just an orange bottle, you lie still inside, though it’s no cemetery. I pour the day’s family into my palm. Whoever came along for the ride I return to the case. There’s only room for three in me.
After thirty days when it’s empty there’s always the same scene. Escaped powder lines the bottom of the bottle. I lick my pinky. I eat your thoughts.
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Ode to Lithium #4: Painting of an Invisible Bridge
How many did it take? How many hands to bring you here?
Someone designed the machine. He had a name.
Someone pulled the lever. She wore a ring.
Someone gathered the elements, carried the shovel, chipped a nail.
Many gripped their instruments, swirled the vat under masks.
They had preferences: a favorite season, an often worn color.
Someone pushed a silver tub across a lab slowly so as not to spill.
Someone’s lone task was to package the powder into pellets.
Sick, he flicked the switch, refusing to go home.
Someone’s gloved fingers held you like a diamond,
weighed you, monitored a screen as you fell into bottles.
You settle on the rim of my plate next to bacon & bread.
The only blessing is to be seated like this.
Every morning countless guests arrive,
the invisible bridge between my life & yours.
I look & look but cannot find them.
In my body a congregation of touches.
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Ode to Lithium #728: Unrequited Teacher
My hands tremor & a slowness fogs me, my girl
& I just fought, I clean my dish so hard
it flies from my hands & shatters.
You, my infinitesimal gargoyle,
chaperone of my darkness, watch me bend to sweep
the shards into the dustpan
& laugh, dare to speak of God (what a word
for a medicine to utter) -- of Reason & Presence &
How to Roll With it, Baby. I spit
in your hand, call you ruthless.
“It’s true,” you say, “Give me enough time
& I’ll anvil your kidneys, lose your memory for you.”
I tear open lesson after lesson, cursing
each like a hangnail. My little impossible guru.
Prom date to the infinite void. You say: “Don’t worry,
everything’s out of control.” You say:
“Men become accustomed to poison
by degrees.” In all my drama I can’t argue
with the master. You kiss me awake & tuck me in.
Instead of Darling, you whisper Mortal.
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Ode to Lithium #63: Lightweight
at the party I’m called a lightweight
while you shovel salt through my blood
like a dedicated father clearing the driveway
except the driveway is the whole world
you make wine take off its clothes faster
glaze my eyes with gentle & I deserve a life--
time supply of this ease so when they
tease “just one drink & you’re good”
they don’t know it’s not the wine
somebody cares for me
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Ode to Lithium #-4: The Runner II
Helena Joy drank pickle juice from the jar, stole
my green nail polish, egged her humping rabbits on, killed
the basement light so I couldn't find my hands, cracked
too many eggs into the batter, enjoyed the hatch & fester
of a lie in her mouth, named every doll after herself, tore
fake bills out of my fists & claimed the game, carefully lay
three drawings on the ground: legs, torso, face of some man
& ground her hips against it on the rug, in her dusty Victorian
with nibbled chalk in the driveway & a circular pool in the back,
chewed her long braid & poured. When maggots galloped
from the syrup's lip onto our pancakes her body chose
a laugh, but unlike her I couldn't leave them or, they wouldn't
leave me as later I climbed the ladder & edged the lip of the
pool, plastic blue tarp sealing it for Autumn & fell in, writhing
in my sudden coffin, useless hands grasping no rail until
it was her mother, three hundred pounds lifting me,
having heard the splash from the living room & run,
faster, fastest to me, my own mother behind her.
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Header GIF courtesy of Mattieu Bourel. To view a gallery of his GIFs and art on NAILED, go here.
Shira Erlichman is a writer and musician. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work can be found in The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, BUST, The Offing, and Winter Tangerine, among others. She was awarded a residency by the Millay Colony and the James Merrill Fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center. Originally from Israel, she lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their orange cat. Learn more about Shira here.