cygnoir.net

If you are reading this, you have been infected. Proceed to the Wellness Center. At the door, remove the piece of clothing you like best. This certainly carries the disease, and will be destroyed.

No one will greet you. There is no one staffing the Wellness Center in this time of crisis; all personnel have been deployed to less fortunate towns. You may not see another person during your intake assessment. There is no need for alarm.

Sit in the blue chair. The green chair will turn blue at times. It is temperamental. Do not be fooled. Wait long enough for the blue chair to prove itself blue. This will take a short amount of time, but longer than you think.

The screen above you will descend until it is approximately one foot from your face. Look directly into the screen. It will diagnose the level of your infection. It will also provide a complimentary snapshot of your inner beauty. This inner beauty is not representative of an objective inner beauty. The Wellness Center will not be held liable for what you see there.

The treatment will happen without your knowledge. It may take a second or a day. For some, it takes years. No one will know when you have recovered. You will not feel any different; you will not look any different. The Wellness Center will bill you within thirty days.

Go home. Look in the mirror. You are cured. Thank you for your cooperation.

A pile of hopes, socks just out of the dryer,
top a new year. That is fine, but everyone
wants you to be careful to match the socks.

I am not careful. I am tired of being careful.
I throw love at you, and it could hit you in the face.
It is tiring to be loved haphazardly, I know.

Someone will tell you things about your past,
about how you should feel about your past,
or about how to match the socks.

All I say is shapes and colors matter little.
Some of them have gone missing anyway.
Love with force. Match or don’t match. Just catch.

– Halsted M. Bernard

She thought that it would be enough when they had to register as no-gods, when they divided the line between types of belief. She never thought it would come to enforced sterilization. What was once a practice they so readily embraced as “choice” was now a mandatory medical procedure for all no-gods at age seven. The last procreating generation would be allowed to live, openly pitied as if they were unbaptized babies sent to limbo, checkboxes forever grayed-out. They were no longer of consequence.

– excerpted from an untitled story in progress

I hadn’t thought of you in a while, and
right when I saw the lanky brunette
swivel sideways in her plastic seat
to let someone out, I thought of you,
your skin and hair and bones,
so taut and shiny. You were the
epitome of “girl” in my world and if
I had a crush on you –
    we all did –
it was because I couldn’t take you apart.
I couldn’t see your separate parts.
You were effortless
and your cigarettes always lit the first time,
and I hated your perfect breasts
framed by your crisp denim jacket.

After we fought,
and after you left because we fought,
you became the woman on the train,
older and harder and still unwilling
to get up for anyone, to move or
to be moved. She swiveled and I saw
the back of your jacket, smelling of
Tide and smoke and grain alcohol, of
pride. Of what I thought you would give me.
Of what I thought I had earned.

– Halsted M. Bernard

These words are mercenaries.
They slouch outside the back door of this poem,
clouds of frosty air billowing around their heads,
belts and boots glinting in the flood lamp.

When it is time, these words slip inside,
carrying a box or a knife or an envelope.
The hallway is dim. The recipient waits.
A noise, half-sigh, half-groan, escapes.

Perhaps nothing happened. The front door swings open;
these words stumble out, playing drunk.
They cross the street and their posture straightens.
As the moon lifts, they head for the next poem.

– Halsted M. Bernard