Surviving Suicide

I'm honored to have three new poems included in Surviving Suicide, the excellent anthology just released by Nirala Press, in company with such celebrated writers as Ravi Shankar, Karen Corine Herceg, Yogesh Patel, Yuyutsu Sharma, and many others. I offer one of my poems here (below). 

Multiple Attempts on Dark Hollow Road, Friday Nights in Winter
(for Tommy Walters)
 
The way you drove in snowstorms, the way
the tires lost their grip at the bend the way
 
we spun and spun and spun right into
oncoming cars the way you laughed that laugh
 
that laugh that crossed between scream
and manifesto and the way that
 
drivers in the oncoming cars panicked
the way they honked their horns and flashed
 
their brights and cut their wheels the way
they raised their arms as if those might stop
 
you coming on and on and on. And the way
we spun right past them every time
 
right on past them every time and coasted down
to Main Street at the hill’s bottom and swung
 
a U and turned back up Liberty Avenue
to do it again. And the way you rejoiced, pounding
 
the steering wheel, shouting, “Did you see
his fucking face!” which of course I did--
 
the sheer terror, the split-second awareness
that this time was the time and how there was
 
never enough time to get it all together,
to get it all in order to prepare for this time,
 
this exact time that he knew was coming,
knew all along was coming, the way we all know
 
that it’s coming, we know it all the time.
What he couldn’t know was how perfectly

you were in control. Every time. How could he?
How could you? How could I?
 
SURVIVING SUICIDE 32