State Mandated Therapy Session

 Two Weeks After Andre’s SuicideI close my eyes before the face of the sun    & see dogs run    & men dance like house gnatsrounding out their turns above an abandoned cup of coffee    or Andre’s beckons for mefrom across a playground    to tame the familiar thrill of the merry-go-round    or winterplowed-snow-mountains we bungle together    with our puny bodies    somehow enamoredby our small claim of cosmos    until we goof to the ground    into the dimples of someneighbor’s yard. Against the black velvet of my eyelids    a sea slides past wry rocksas sun-spangled foam in rush    to the shore to swallow    the proof of our return to the land.I remember myself    & mosey on from under the porchlight of his mother’s homepast the forget-me-knots of her garden    Andre once trounced in a game of manhunt& I must not be looking to put on this simple smile    that though empty    should remainbehind the eight ball in my throat   so that I might remember still    the brief cracks of lightgiven by him as I now wane down this brow of hill    & into the trombone wails of a taxithe moon shivers over. Nary a prayer or kissing of ribs    where Elisabeth invites meto plant more than the jojoba & coconut I twist into her hair    nary a mosh pit onthe road shoulder    with mulch & prune of thorn sallies forth    any fancy of my youthbut only dreams of this town dying in its place                            this his strip of street                                                                                            this his hometown gutter. ___Christopher J. Greggs is a Callaloo and Watering Hole fellow and was the recipient of the Goodman Poetry prize from the City College of New York. His work has been published in the Promethean Literary Journal, Great Weather for MEDIA, and TriQuarterly. He lives in D.C. with his fiancé Nadia.