Fever

by Leanne Averbach

 

"We have art in order to not die of the truth" - Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Haunted by the butter you left at the bedside I must

run - take in a film. No use; I come back.

From the mantle I take and rotate a carving,

a soapstone man in the grip of a raven grinning;

round and round in one hand, it's small enough.

I try the tube. Reruns on the History Channel;

history repeating itself.  I flip to a film, but it's the same

one I paid for earlier, or may as well

be.  Some fetish thing, your

kind of thing. Back in bed I variegate

the covers, dream of big ships unfurling, leaving

returning with outlandish bounty, news of the new world.

But the butter - still there on the night table. It's oblong

slowness.  This empty hand.  The incessant night hollow.