Jay Brecker

The Way He’s Moved

Half out of the water.
Half out of the tub. Blinded
—soap in his eyes; grasping
for the white waffle-towel, somehow
knowing it has fallen;
feet slipping and he is
falling, aware of the rush
toward the off-white
glass-tile floor. A fine life, is
what he thinks, living here
among low buildings. Here
where light is never blocked
until the marine layer rolls in;
a place where architecture does
not create canyons, yet one exists
on the edge of his small city where
—trailing down its walls
—houses are built like swallows'
nests, where cars park
on level rooftops, gray-weathered staircases
lead down to cedar doorways; windows open
to vistas of white-capped waves. And it would
take only one shockwave,
or heavy rainfall to send them
sliding or tumbling,
as he is sliding and tumbling,
downhill toward the ocean
—the ocean where the white sun bleeds
red on the horizon, as his left arm
finds the toilet, plunging
halfway in; crooked elbow
—that angle-joint—leveraging
his body like a brake,
breaking his fall; his head
coming to rest, tangent
to the white cotton bathmat and all
is white            is silence          is star.

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Jay Brecker works and writes in southern California. His poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Rattle Poets Respond, Permafrost, Lily Poetry Review, Ocean State Review, The Inflectionist Review, South 85 Journal, I-70 Review, RHINO Poetry and elsewhere. His manuscript, A Ceiling is a Wall Seeking, was a semi-finalist for the 2020 Wheeler Prize for Poetry.