ode to nas, ode to the cousin the cousin of death
anesthesia & euthanasia, two
cousins in the night of killing, hand you
two wrenches like lilies for all the pain
first – one buds like a point with no axis
from which the second blooms Fibonacci
spirals of petals which might cut any
other flower to the half-life. here, with-
in this act: the exact same corkscrewing
it takes to give a hand to a wrench, now,
euthanasia, like a cassette, rewinds
you to piles of nail, new york’s, no home.
anesthesia is that baby still young
enough to be a want, at home, sporting
a children’s toolbox, laughing, anything
[could be outside doors even death. look: here.]
Trace Howard DePass is the author of Self-portrait as the space between us (PANK Books, 2018), which was a finalist for the 2019 Eric Hoffer Book Prize. He served as the editor of Scholastic’s Best Teen Writing of 2017 & as the 2016 Teen Poet Laureate for the Borough of Queens. His work has been featured on screen and radio—BET Next Level, Billboard, Blavity, Poetry Foundation, Ours Poetica, and NPR’s The Takeaway—and in print— SAND Journal, Entropy Magazine, Platypus Press, Split This Rock, The Poetry Project, & Bettering American Poetry (Volume 3). DePass is a Poetry Incubator, Teaching Artist Project, & Poets House Fellow.
IG: @tracedepass
Twitter: @southsidepoems
