one poem by Xenia Gianiotis Turner

SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY

One too many animals in here, so I fled this house, our home

on Broadway, an infested one bedroom with an unreliable elevator

and two shadowy stairwells that hoard trash bags too big for stuffing down

the chute, dusted with the intimates of invisible lodgers who caught a stretch of sleep

inside. Our shithole of six stories, a pre-war erection that has yet to go bust, is home.

I put us here to catch a dream I had and you said you’d come too. Together,

hopscotching puddles of someone else’s ectoplasm, I got stuck in

the ooze of sweat and tears and could do nothing about it.

It started around the time I rescued a dog from my mother

after her fourth rehoming. Unsure of how I’d help the helpless, I

was uneasy about the additional expense, so I started bathing her myself

and taking her to school with me. On the phone, my mother thanked me for relieving

her of her burden. I said she’s the best thing that happened to me, that I couldn’t even

imagine life without her. At the same time I remember thinking, how strange

and misshapen my mouth is, after voicing so many lies, believing that

one day, after enough effort and sacrifice, they might come

true. Once again, it’s become hard to focus on anything but

the elevator’s touchy buttons, timing the seconds it’ll take for the six

to flash yellow in the morning rush of ups and downs, another life sentence:

every day, in need of relief, our animals must wait, and waiting, I flash red, enraged at

the awful state of our estranged accommodations. Relief comes on the image of daddy

excoriating into the wind, for no sake but to taste his own spit, and the saliva

at the corners of my mouth sucked back, our rage, once formidable,

now, is funny. Isn’t it funny? How animals bark in refusal

of iron cages and the dog holds herself together patiently.