by Barry Grass
Patches of skin walk in sagged and browned. Patches of skin like ruins of skin on skin. Some skin showing where hair once was. Mostly ruined skin showing where a person once was. No. Always a person. Never forget their humanity. Never call them desperate. Always notice their desperation. There are the tests, always, the tubes & diastolic numbers & cuffs & pumps. There is the paperwork, always, the photocopies & emergency contacts & “how long?”s & “where at?”s. There is the hatred, never, but down there somewhere, near memories of fathers, near feelings of abandonment. There is the conflict.
Always. Cover the skin. Throw sheets on the ruins and flush out the grime. Fight the protests. Check the purse, the pant leg. Take the knife, the rock. Wear gloves, always, but never do; gloves create distance. Desire distance, always. Get close in spite of desire, always. Take blood pressures. Talk to them until sleeping. Look at that skin.
junk 
Slow Burn
Posted in Erin Murphy, Junk 2: Winter 2011 with tags Correction, creative nonfiction, Erin Murphy, Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets, nonfiction, Penn State Altoona, Pity, Word Problems on February 14, 2011 by Editorsby Erin Murphy
The day my brother nearly burns down the house, I am sitting on the living room floor.
Correction: it’s not a house but an apartment, my father’s first since the divorce.
I am playing with Lincoln Logs on the burnt-orange shag carpet, building and rebuilding a perfect house with a green roof.
Correction: I’m not playing; I’m killing time until we’re returned to our real home with our real toys and our real parent.
My father is taking a nap in the apartment’s only bedroom.
Correction: It’s not a nap but his usual stupor, a label for which we won’t have for years.
I see the fire out of the corner of my eye.
Correction: What I see first is the shadow puppet of a fire performing on the kitchen wall; mesmerized, I watch for the better part of a minute before investigating its cause.
When I crane my neck around the corner, I see my two-year-old brother waving a brown paper bag that he has dipped in the lit burner of the gas stove. Pretty, he exclaims. Pretty! Pretty!
Correction: He can’t pronounce pretty. He says pity.
I knock the burning bag from my brother’s hand and scream for our father, who bolts from the bedroom and douses the flames.
Correction: Our father doesn’t respond until I shake him awake; he extinguishes the fire with a pot of cold, two-day-old coffee.
My brother’s exclamations soften to a whisper: Pity. Pity. Pity.
No correction necessary.
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