Ischemic Stroke

A poem

Photograph taken by Giuseppe Bartoli.

The way that Lehman Brothers collapsed
was how the asset bubbles inside your brain
burst. With the flow of blood blocked,
your memory bank was forced to file for Chapter Eleven
as the vascular vaults inside of your constricted veins
barred your body from fighting off the buyouts —
as little by little — the hostile takeover bids
yielded you blindness, hemiplegia, and Alzheimer’s.

Born on nine-eleven, I should have known
that when the two clouts crashed into your brain
like the planes that bashed into the facades
of the Twin Towers, the fact I caught you in mid-flight —
inches from bashing your skull on Italian marble —
meant you were a prisoner inside your own body.