Not Here

Rainafter Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette

Eventually, the dinner party topic is ghost-animals, someone’s dead mother
returning. I spoon a strange creamy dessert into my mouth, suggest a tattoo,
as in, prove it. I slink out before it’s settled. Makes sense, Alette says later at
the Red Room, swirling a finger around the ice in her rocks glass. Who doesn’t
dream of rat eyes? Our mother is not dead, she waits on Zoom until I turn my
attention toward her silence. I went too far again, I say, finishing my drink. Do
you regret it? Alette says. I stack-up the regrets: fused together, hinged together,
tangled like a rat-king. Alette shovels snow for our father, his thin body
buried in the plush contours of an easy chair. She salts the walk, stays a while.
Home, she waits for something to scurry through the floorboards into her
veins. They nest there: you’ve seen them. You’ve seen me, how I undress for
any mechanical whir, needle to my ribcage. My red eye an emptied room.