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Arsenic Eaters
Arsenic eaters
die of unpoisoning
if they miss their doses.
Some people become like them,
but instead take a forgetting.
We see someone reeking of
yeast passed out like a sack of rice
-- ah, there,
take some forgetting. We see
a man hitting his kid
-- have a thumb-full.
A woman -- nice dress, clean hair -- feeds
her five-month-old diet Coke and I go
for my knuckle which I scrape with my
teeth to get the arsenic from the bone.
What else was there today?
The sleeping forms shifting from
tree shadow to tree
shadow in the park
were the first things I had to forget,
before that I remember paper bag hands,
vomit, and urine spilling
onto the path.
Copyright Louise Robertson
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Copyright Louise Robertson