Bobby Parrott

In the Drift of an Eye

Before seeing
my ophthalmologist,
I alter myself
a pair of sunglasses
to block my right eye
so only one of everything
slides by as I pedal my bike,

navigate hallways. Doctor
Ortiz smiles big
at my self-treatment,
proceeds with his guesses—
Diabetes? Epilepsy?
Multiple Sclerosis? Each
a rebellion, a sticky schism
arisen between self 

and body. So then, what is
a body? A double vision
between one eye’s tight-rope,
the other’s trapeze?

Oh agreement, we must
resolve! Only one eye
drifts, and the pharmacy
of your face collapses
in collage, overlap
and montage, a horror-show
carnival’s Picasso pinball machine 

on TILT. So I play along, try
to relax. Begin to see—
How sidewalks penetrate
bike lanes, centerlines disrupt
the punctuation of trees, pinprick
this pulsing vessel. Street-slick

heartbeat in its lethal flow
of cars. Shock-trauma
transfusion in surgical steel—
my shortcut home.

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Bobby Parrott's poems appear in Tilted House, RHINO, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Atticus Review, The Hopper, Rabid Oak, Exacting Clam, Neologism and elsewhere. Wearing a forest-spun jacket of toy dirigibles, this writer dreams himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule known as Fort Collins, Colorado.