Noah Falck
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH OR WITHOUT HEALTHCARE
for Jake Adam York

I left town. Snow followed.

Deer outnumbered trees.

Fought traffic. Teachers

standardized the shit

out of us. Shared cornbread.

Everything was new:

lake water, loitering,

lozenges. The future

grew my stomach,

lost my hair. Clouds

opened over the hospital,

and I fingered last century’s scars.

I was beautiful in the pause

of a photograph. O, to be

young in leather in the future

under an insomniatic sky

on the verge of collapsing

compare this to the drunk driver

in all of us, the blues song in all of us.

I left town singing. I left town without

narration. But not before holding you

like beatbox rhymes on my lips

as the rain fell fell fell like elevators

in an unwelcome universe.