VIRGIL SUAREZ
SONG IN PRAISE OF XANAX
what inevitably begins as a tickle on the bottoms
of my feet, works its way up my legs as a tingle,
a current so unmistakable--then, sweat coats
the palms of my hands, forehead and nape
of neck, and I know the panic of such moments
springs from incertitude, that void of not
knowing, usually these moments that plague
the mind at night, when the body most
surrenders to an active mind asking what now?
What next? The darkness serves up its silence.
Visions emerge from the ceiling: a house on fire,
a man desperate to leave his country, my father,
a cigarette bent in his mouth, a pit dog at the corner
of the street, and live animals herded and thrown
into the fire, the smell of charred flesh, the blinding
billowing smoke. This is the same smoke that clouds
the mind and the heart, long enough to feel like the world
is at its end, but during these moments, what saves us
is a little pink pill, trapezoid in shape, as it dissolves
bites and sharp in the mouth, as it works its magic
of tranquility on the brain, quieting everything.
It is after taking one of these little pills that the heart
reverts to a gallop, a type of paso fino, after much rumble,
and I think of my mother a widow now, alone in her
house, and her singing to herself, to me, what she sang
when I hurt myself, bruised a knee of cut a finger:
Sana, sans, culito de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanaras
manana. Xanax gets us through the night. Blessed
cocktail of chemicals, signals like buoys lighting
this periolous journey home through darkness, storm, fire.