Thomas Locicero’s most recent poem to appear here was “Table Wine” (June 2018).

Happy Birthday
for my sister, Lisa

She rushed me, her pace as frantic
as an old newsreel with its white
sunspots and static hiccups,
which were her cursed legs as one
disobeyed the other; stumbling
now, too, and just as abandoned,
I caught her before the ground
employed its gravitational pull
upon her like an unseen net,
and all the world is awkward—
her tongue tries to loosen her words,
her laughter thick and throaty.
She is balancing now on a beam
undetectable amid the outstretched
earth and so I half-carry,
half-drag her to a chair,
careful not to choose one too soft.
She pauses, summoning
her breath to ease her lungs,
her pacemaker a deformed
chicken bone bulging from her
frailty. No one would know
that she was dystrophic
had she not insisted on moving.
We will reenact all this
when she leaves,
all this just to wish me
Happy Birthday one last time.