Aaron Baker

CRUSHED VICODIN

On Xanax, glue, crushed Vicodin
and stately pleasure ketamine,
a mortal crash despite a venal sin.
Sidewalk fentanyl again
and bottom-shelf whiskey,
then 50mg of Oxy downed
with an eighth tequila round.
Guard the light until we’ve cut the pills.
All subtraction is increase
of sunset on Tumamoc Hill…
palm fronds pinken on the breeze.
Crypto-mystic vision’s nice
until it closes off the air.
A finger probes for the abstract—
the more blurred, the more exact
my love and less exact my lover.
Such lightness and such heavy breathing,
a little pinch where it’s most pleasing.
Try more of you inside my throat.
Slide back, slide in, take over.
Fireflies bespeck the clover—
the lift and lilt of upward motion,
Hearthlight Homes how longing runs
to basement pain from backyard fun.
The moon upon Mount Lemmon
stands naked amidst downcast stars.
Northern cross and scimitar,
the mind feeds on the body’s pleasure.
Desert night, I’m so in love,
the sky comes crawling down the draws,
abysmal waste-wind and rough trade,
drunken slurs of Sodom and Sonora.
I wanted not to think it’s true,
such universal sadness, lust,
but I’ve heard it all along
in each sigh of sleep and sex and song.
The needle fills the vein with ice,
knowledge dawning in your stare,
one vast estate of curdled prayer,
untethered, floating in midair.
No one accepts this sacrifice.
Be with me now in Paradise.
We die and then we raise our dead.

AARON BAKER is the author of three collections of poetry: Mission Work (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), Posthumous Noon (Gunpowder Press, 2018), and a book-length poem, American Experiment, forthcoming from Texas Review Press. He divides his time between Chicago and Tucson and teaches at Loyola University Chicago.