taphephobia the morning after i learn chester bennington committed suicide
BY BRANDON ANTHONY MELENDEZ
2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry
Previously appeared in diode poetry journal
In the 18th century, cholera flooded Europe
& all the faucets
in people’s bodies opened. They leaked
& leaked until the coma set in. This yawning
sleep was so often mistaken for quietus
that the fear of live burial
bloomed like bacterium, mania wet
& septic. To prevent more
accidental entombment,
a German doctor mechanized a coffin
with bells the dead could rattle
if they found themselves gasping,
lungs filled with muddy oxygen
& an urge towards resurrection.
[::]
The human body can lose about twenty percent
of its water before the coma sets in,
before sleep is a box nailed shut. Afterward,
we exist only in endings, in dirge
& dirt. I’ve been to enough funerals
to know that at the heart
of every cathedral, there is an organ
gasping for air. The tune pushes
through a depressed cavity into a sick,
sick sadness. I’ve learned what I can
& cannot handle, what body I have left
when I am no longer water.
I can lose twenty percent of myself
before depression sets in, before all the songs
in my head go silent. & after,
I can only talk about myself
as ending. My throat, a carillon tower
flooding with the musician still inside.
[::]
I’ve learned depression
is the name we give to gravity
when we demand a diagnosis.
It is both the casket & the cavity waiting
with its eager mouth.
I am afraid that someday
I will catch myself sleeping
& reach for a spade. This morning,
before I could open my eyes
I pushed my ear toward my chest
& waited
hoping to hear bells.
i watch the family move into the house at the end of the block
BY BRANDON ANTHONY MELENDEZ
2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry
& I remember how a man hung himself
in that garage on the hottest day
of July & his daughter walked in
to discover his body
a little closer to god. Rumor was she found
the family dog nuzzled beneath
her father’s legs but it snarled & snapped
whenever she got too close.
For a week, the news boiled
the air in our neighborhood. Anyone
who walked passed that house swore
their neck started to burn. By Sunday,
everyone was back
mowing their lawns & drinking Coors
out on the fresh paved asphalt.
All the teenagers gathered
at the community pool
to drink vodka & escape ourselves,
to count the years until we leave
this city without season, this forever
empty sky. As far as I know
no one saw the dead
man’s daughter after that.
She barricaded the front door
with plywood one evening & was gone.
No one knows if she ever came back
for the dog. But months passed
& the summer heat stayed muzzled
inside the house all year. I know this
because when the U-Haul pulled
into the driveway this morning
& the garage door creaked open
for the first time since,
two rows of gnarled teeth
lurched out
& disappeared into the open sky.
reino or i see my grandfather by the side of the road, about where he’s buried, but he’s wandering around with a flag of vertebrae
BY BRANDON ANTHONY MELENDEZ
2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry
Previously appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal
I mean, he is dead, though.
Doesn’t this make him American
enough to demand the land
he was buried in is his?
Doesn’t this entitle him to break
bread with gods
whose names fill the sky
with anvils?
Or was he just buried
in random earth—
because I saw a truck
drive over his grave
like that isn’t how people
get cursed—like that driver
isn’t going to crack open
their jaw tomorrow & spill out
ratones, conejos, cucarachas,
& all their teeth.
[::]
Who’s to say this soil
is American anyway,
like have you asked
my grandma?
She once swore
the whole of California
belongs to her
mother & my father still
calls this dead man
Reino. That’s right, the whole
damn kingdom. Grandfather was,
after all, an unruly man
he once pulled his spine
out of a screaming mouth
& carried that hurt
until the end.
Who’s going to tell him
he can’t still reign
from the dirt?
[::]
The U.S. government
denied my grandfather
a military funeral,
denied they ever held him
against a gun
& called them both by the same
name.
The official reason they gave
was my grandfather
did not join the Marines
legally, & fine
but he still volunteered
to walk into any slaughter-
house with a crown
of bullets in each hand,
they could have
at least sent a flag,
or the name
of that truck driver,
or a throne.
