Leveler Poetry Journal
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2.14

 

9:33am

 

A spot! You’re 12 minutes earlier than your 15-minute-early

goal. You found a spot. You’re already making it work, today.

 

9:33:30am

 

The spot’s by a fast-food drive-in. It’s a real spot, but you see

why it’s open. A little too close to the driveway. Getting

sideswiped, a nightmare you can’t add. Smart people pass this

up. They don’t take the bad spots. They have the confidence to

stroll in a few minutes late. There’s enough time to find

another spot.

 

9:34am

 

Pace up and down and around the decision. Wince when cars

get too close. You should move. You should move the car for

peace of mind. It’s not too late. Move the car. You’re

supposed to be meditating on faith. You found this spot.

 

9:35am

 

It’s too late to move the car. You have an appointment. You

can’t make them wait.

 

9:38am

 

Leave car.

 

9:42am

 

Two-step turn. Check the bumper one more time. Clench your

stomach and turn towards the Drug and Alcohol Intake on

Fillmore. Walk. Cross. Take note of how much you don’t like

this street and can’t come back.

 

9:44am

 

Open the clinic door with your sleeve. This is the responsible

thing to do. Catch things before they spiral. You’re good at

this. Catching. Measuring. The damage already accumulated.

Both your therapists agree. It’s (probably) situational. But in

case.

 

9:45am

 

Fold into the instant stick of hot, candy breath and sanitizer.

Dirty, eggshell-tiled floors. Fidgeting hands and elevated,

tone-deaf greetings exchanged mid-conversation. Disquiet.

You were too honest. You’re always too honest, too late.

That’s why you’re here. No one checks the correct boxes on

health-intake forms. It should have gone, a routine physical.

 

9:55am

 

The first counselor wishes you a happy Valentine’s Day. You

have to recall the last 30 days, how many without a drink? It’s

been almost a year. Today, also Fat Tuesday. There are ways

to count, ounces in drinks. Binging denies a cruel imperial

chart. Were you abused? Always the oddest query. Do you

know what that means? Perspective makes it an impossible

question. Recalibration says, don’t be dramatic.

 

10:13am

 

You’re led with a plastic urine cup. Told to leave your purse

on the chair, the nurse will watch. The bathroom has no sink.

You can’t be trusted with water. No mirror. You can’t be. No

one here is allowed to see their fingerprint. It’s feigned

sanitization. It’s a false profile you surrender. It’s only that

piece of you.

 

10:19am

 

Drained. You step outside and ask where you can wash your

hands. There’s a sink in the hallway. You wash in front of the

half-sleeping man you saw earlier. He’s slinky hunched in a

chair, indifferent to your ceremony. His heart rate is seductive.

You mime his breaths. Every 11 seconds. You haven’t slept in

days. You’re asked if it’s ok to be weighed. You say, no. It’s

only blood you’re offering.




Kimberly Reyes

levelheaded: 2.14

 

This poem is really concerned with time. It takes a cryptically formatted date (“2.14”) as its title, then goes on to mark out exactly 46 minutes of the speaker’s thoughts on what sounds like a particularly fraught morning. The poem’s timestamps—sometimes down to the second (“9:33:30am”)—let us experience the poem in real-time. It’s an interesting structural choice that pushes right up against some of our expectations of poetry, particularly because the fact that this happens over exactly 46 minutes removes a lot of ambiguity about what we are witnessing.

 

Time is a key component of any narrative, but it’s rarely such an important feature of lyric poems. This poem does tell a simple narrative: the speaker arrives at “the Drug and Alcohol Intake on / Fillmore” for a substance abuse test. But the poem seems more interested in conveying the galaxies of anxiety spiraling through the speaker’s mind at any given moment. What should be a simple victory, finding a parking spot, becomes an imagined scenario that devolves into self-loathing: “Getting / sideswiped, a nightmare you can’t add. Smart people pass this / up. They don’t take the bad spots.” And, per the poem’s timestamps, the speaker’s descent into an imaginary worst-case scenario happens in just 30 seconds.

 

Even beyond the poem’s structure, time is an essential part of the speaker’s perspective. The speaker’s initial celebration is caused by her arrival “12 minutes earlier than your 15-minute-early / goal.” Part of her pre-screening for the test involves recalling “the last 30 days, how many without a drink? It’s / been almost a year.” And as she leaves the facility, she notes a man’s slowed respiration (and her own abnormal sleeping patterns): “You mime his breaths. Every 11 seconds. You haven’t slept in / days.” As these moments rack up, we begin to understand the poem’s timeline-like structure is an extension of the speaker’s fixation on the passage of time, chiefly on the ways that it can signal health or disease. The structure has not been imposed on the poem. Instead time, rendered explicitly, is the only way this speaker can make us understand the toll of her frantic mind. The costs of the speaker’s anxieties, at least as far as this poem is concerned, may remain largely unseen. She gives urine or blood to the lab, but she also gives up something irreplaceable—time. And just like with bodily fluids, each time you relinquish a bit of time, you surrender a “piece of you.”

 

 

-The Editors