Collisions
Captive, held tight by hard metal and soft leather,
an apparition in progress, pulsing red lights like
someone else’s heartbeat, sirens cutting in and
back out like how he once taught me to slice perfectly
through a coconut’s shell to get at its meat or
release everything wild within so that shiny
new Christmas Schwinn can pick up just enough
speed to carry me safely home. Now his windshield
fractures like a body, and the body still doesn’t seem
like his. Each streetlight bends over us like an angel,
beckoning or rekindling life. Is this uncertainty why
my mom never let me open her mother’s casket?
That maybe I’d expect her arms to reach out for
one final embrace, for her lips to curl up around
my name again. But when Dad’s mouth opens
up to the paramedics and fireflies, it’s more a
swallowing, a simple prayer for breath. And maybe
that’s enough to keep things whole a bit longer.
John Schneider is the author of Swallowing the Light (2022), a Pinnacle Best Book Poetry winner, NYC Big Book Distinguished Favorite, International Book Awards winner, and author of the non-fiction book, Dreaming and Being Dreamt (Routledge 2023). He is a multiple award-winning poet, most recently winner of the Milton J. Kessler Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, the Rash Award, and Crosswinds Poetry Contest. He resides in Berkeley, California.
