Quick Recovery, and: Speedway Creamer

Quick Recovery, and: Speedway Creamer Jake Fournier (bio) Quick Recovery I put on my thigh-highs and step into the gulch.The slicked rocks strewn with exploded carpand plastic garbage give way gradually tothe sulfurous waters where they say the boy drowned.My arms in to the shoulderI turn my face up to a sky so bright its blueoozes around the outline of a crooked pine. Nineteenand a half and high, he'd been a toiler in the pit onesummer and this was unemployed. I knowa little about work so my sympathy is right whereyou'd expect it to lie. If his gut didn't split he'd havefloated to the surface but his face is calm enough thatwhen they get him drained if they still want to [End Page 56] they'll open the casket at the chapel. I never had beefwith ugliness, can hardly get drunk, don't go inmuch for Jesus but I know He said "I'll makeyou fishers of men" and a couple other things thatin my case proved true. For godsake if you want to get fromhere to happiness you go straight through. You dig likeI tell my kids all the way to China. Showering at the stationthough I'm trying to picture it right and seems like you'dcome up somewhere in the ocean or on somePacific island, maybe Indonesia. [End Page 57] Speedway Creamer Take it to the bathroom and put it in your pocket. Come backand pay for it. What about some butter? Your consciencelikes the stimulus. It saddles your fib in velvet,breaks it. Now you squirm when you sit. Supernaturalstillness buried in your laughter, discoordinatedgestures, you switch off every fan in the earthship anddrive to the throbbing core, back to the labor ward. A woman, noncompos, clutches at your ear as you pressher ruptured uterus. Has she come down from the meth? Canshe consent? Your stitching draws a compliment—"At leastyou're consistent"—from a resident. "Fuckingsidewalk people," says the woman's father. "Sure as hellain't living with me." At the back of your mind where [End Page 58] your spirit hangs down like a uvula, youswallow him alive. Maybe that's why when you'rewaking up at 3, all you can think is, "I need coffee and a dickin me." The cretin that becomes us when we titterat the homeless lunging for the car or crushingindustrial caulk into the street, that giddy feeling ofabsurdity and sorrow, is what guides you to thesuffering. You're like a dowser's rod jerkingto an underwater stream. "What'sthe point of this?" you think. Break down crying. Fourhours later, purple as a bishop's robes and lightas fluorescence, the baby's in your hands. You lay heron her mother's chest. A noise like icicles crashing on aplastic drum catches in her throat. A momentof quiet, then the attending leaves to check hermessages. The placenta almost radiates as the scrubnurse eases it into a gleaming, clear container. [End Page 59] Jake Fournier jake fournier is a poet and scholar who lives in Albuquerque, NM. His poetry has appeared recently in Lana Turner, Annulet, and Partisan Hotel. He researches abolitionist poetry, and his scholarship can be found in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture. Copyright © 2023 Yale University