Karr, "Hurt Hospital's Best Suicide Jokes"

In unfolded aluminium chairs the color of shit
    and set in a circle as if to corral some emptiness
        in this church basement deep in the dirt,
            strangers sit and tell stories.
Sergei sipped wine in a hot tub. Janice
    threw back shots in a dive.
        Bob drew blinds to smoke blunts and ate nothing
            but cake frosting bought by the case.
The first lady of someplace swiped her son’s meds
    to stay slim. Craig burst through bank doors,
        machine gun in hand. John geezed heroin:
            with a turkey baster, he says, into a neck vein.
A cop shoved Mark’s face in the mud,
    put a shoe on his neck to cuff him and ask
        where his friends were. I had friends,
            he said, think I’d be here?
Zola once wrote that the road from the shrine
    at Lourdes was impressively littered
        with crutches and canes but he noted
            not one wooden leg.
In the garage, with your face through a noose,
    you kick out the ladder, but the green rope won’t give,
        and when your wife clicks the garage switch and the door
            tilts up, there you dangle on tiptoe.
Alive, all of us, on this island, where we sip only
    black liquids or clear water and face down the void
        we’ve shaped, and should our eyes meet
            what howls erupt — like jackals we bawl
to find ourselves upright.


Mary Karr

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