Winner | Fear Writing Contest
Partridge Boswell of Woodstock, Vermont for “Lazarus at Seven AM”
Lazarus at Seven AM
Because we are the ocean’s tears of joy and sorrow
still weeping from leaving our ocean home…Because
the body has a hundred thousand miles of river in it
which unlike the brain will never be artificial (though
coconut water can be substituted for plasma in a pinch)…
Because despite our knowing we can’t say for certain
which way our daily diasporas are flowing…the lab
opens early. Squat and stout as a barrel of Guinness
in faded blue scrubs, Jerry’s complaining about his coffee:
decaffeinated, no sugar with almond milk—tastes like crap.
Can’t believe they’re making me drink it. “They” being
the ones who brought him back when his heart stopped.
They needed me more than I need them he reasons. I’ve
pricked them all at least a couple times, and they didn’t
even feel it. They know I’m the best…& indeed one second
I’m reciting my DOB & next he’s walking me to the door—
the rubber strap, syringe eased into my forearm of butter
where magically a taped wad of cotton appears—how did
I get here on the other side and not feel a thing? with Jerry
talking the whole time, lamenting how he flatlined for thirty
seconds, barely a toe in the vestibule of that luminous party
tuning the faint raised-glass tinkling of voices within. For me,
it was just black he admits…maybe I wasn’t there long enough.
But I don’t fear it anymore. So there’s that. I tell him my wife
died and came back, when she broke her neck skiing. Says she
floated in the light, saw her brother in the coat room who told
her it wasn’t time and sent her packing back to six months in
a rehab halo. Jerry’s face dances in disappointed fascination.
I’d like to talk to her he says. Sounds like she had all the bells
& whistles. Maybe I just didn’t die long enough. Bastards!
They could’ve waited. But hey, I don’t fear anymore…& like
that, my phlebotomist-savant is shuffling us to the door,
a red vial of me in his hand. Nice talking with you he says.
Good luck with that coffee I reply, a little lightheaded.
It’s early and I haven’t had mine yet—too soon to tell
where the infinite rivers inside my invisible island
will float me, what confluence, rapids or falls might arise
up ahead. The metal door clicks shut behind me. If we’d
had more time, I’d tell him about my first wife too, who
didn’t come back. Next time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of the 2023 Fool for Poetry Prize-winning chapbook Levis Corner House and Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country, Partridge Boswell is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and teaches at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. He troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas, whose debut release Last Night in America is available on Thunder Ridge Records. His Saguaro Prize-winning chapbook Not Yet a Jedi is also now a thing.
Lazarus at Seven AM © 2024 Partridge Boswell
I love the wide territory this poem covers, and how the orphaned last line resonates by itself.