An Excerpt from YOU

***—When it comes to Youthere are no accidents. When it comes to you, Iam the accident. The shrink posits: why are younot worthy of love? He has big broad washedup football player shoulders, he talks througha mustache and sometimes the mustache has littlemouths and coarse mustaches on those mouthsand every single mouth says wouldn't a littlerest feel nice, wouldn't the day be best to sleepand twitch and not feed yourself and not eatand stare at the ceiling quizzically, and thenthe shrink says, I-boy, what is your definitionof mercy, and I look at every mouth in hismustache, and every megaphone insidethose mouths, and I say unto you, mercyis how the highway doesn't swallow the bigrigs, mercy is the semi-automatic left to rust,mercy is the father who totes his neurotic kiddoto the playground and discovers the bulliesstill are gorging themselves on lunchmoney, mercy is the money in your pocketyou never knew laid there until the store clerkasked for more—I say unto you, these arethe I-worlds where space is the X coordinate,time is the Y coordinate, and then the worldsays, um, string theory's right, good luckwith the twelve dimensions, and all that's leftare 12 step meetings. I could tell you aboutthose meetings, but then I'd be breaking the law.A man's got to live by a code and mine isbinary. I lie in my I when I read Herodotus,I lie in the horse spurred on by the soldier,the hem of the councilman toga, I lie in the liesHerodotus told, or so modernity speculates.Lies, whores, and buildings are respectedif they live long enough, and I put my hand onHerodotus's bust, the marble cold in the AegeanJanuary, and I say to the stone, You, you, tell mea story. Once upon a time, I touched the shoulderof every immigrant as each one entered the nation.Their eyelids translucent, the pupils baffledby the light. I leaned into their ears and told themof the detention center, of the prisoners in their sadjumpsuits, of the sounds the ocean makes whenthe hospitals' hypodermic needles greet the shorein search of a better life—a sunburned derriereand a vigorous O positive. But You knowthe truth, how morning insists coffee is an elixir,the day's first cigarette, and enter porch-leftthe person who is your hottest Doppelganger—____Joseph P. Wood is the author of four books and five chapbooks of poetry, which include YOU. (Etruscan Press, forthcoming 2015), Fold of the Map (Salmon, forthcoming 2014), and Variations on an Innocent Axis (Brooklyn Arts Press, forthcoming 2014). A new manuscript, Broken Cage, is currently a finalist for the 2013 National Poetry Series competition. His poetry and criticism have been published in Arts & Letters Daily, BOMB, Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Verse, among other journals. He teaches at The University of Alabama and is book review editor for Atticus Review.