Marrow

POETRY

by John Minczeski

He says I have only two crushed vertebrae
about halfway up. Only two for 77 years
as if I were some Atlas setting the world back down.
Only two? Yes. In a weakened state, sadly. 
In the window the same January tree with no leaves
is lit by the same declining sun. The same bark
protecting the same limbs, shiny as bone.
We could be a nation of robots and sieves. 
We could be a tree with each limb quietly burning. 
Tree of life, tree of orbiting seeds lined up
for the first belch of spring.
The doctor turns the computer monitor 
so I can watch him point with his eraser: 
here, and here, like a bombing run on a train track.
Two broken-down locomotives. Two dragons
sleeping in a cave. If they floated me in a space
capsule, would it take the edge off? Would 
cancer retreat like an ant colony under environmental
stress? My wife and daughter are with me 
to ask questions when I nod as if understanding
what he says.

Onion

POETRY

by John Minczeski

Too lazy to slice a thick round
of onion for my sandwich,
I centered it whole on deli ham
and camouflaged it with lettuce.

Too aged to make my eyes water,
it still had enough to bite back,
and I still taste it hours later.
In “lullaby of the onion,” Hernandez,

on hearing his wife and child
have only onions to eat,
praised them from prison.
We’re human and praise

what we need to. Tonight,
we’ll have freezing rain,
then snow. We have some potatoes,
and in the fridge, onions.

An onion, a wheel. An onion
sliced into a cone of silence.
Pickled in vinegar and sugar,
they’re ready in minutes.

A rotten onion, tossed
into the yard, pries open
a universe, the dog giving
brief chase.

Bless Me

POETRY

by John Minczeski

I made my last poem when it
was still 2024. My death laid on
the frozen grass and dirty snow. 
It wasn’t an attack on the senses,
not the closing of a parenthesis.
Death sat on the sidelines, ten rows
back. Death with a feather in its hat. 
With its hand in the pocket
where it keeps loose change. Focus,
they told me when my mind wandered
giving a speech, maybe standing
in line for a movie. Which movie?
I can’t remember. 
Maybe Fellini would be apt today
when I have no dog to wander the yard.
The vet made a house call to give
the injection. Better here, night falling,
than anywhere. Dawn 
filters through the closed blinds.
An incandescence of knowing. A nod.
A slash of red on a background 
of black. Some light leaks through.