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Three poems by Eric Dittmar

Disassembling Required

When Van Gogh cut off his ear
It was for reassurance that the rest of him could disappear

That illusion of ownership that nerves create
Should have faded with each baby tooth I lost
It didn’t though, contrariwise I worried I would extend
Into roads or trees and then feel the tire’s friction or the elm’s blight

Empathy is a bitch of its own
I pray I never wake up with a Siamese twin
I’d have to care, lest we lapse into mutual sadomasochism
That hilarious territory of bored lovers

The Thalidomide kids might get a kick
out of feeling new arms attached to other people
but that’s the exception that proves the rule

After the Vietnam war, some men believed Agent Orange
Had followed them home, alive in newly discovered nerves
Now what odd god must be behind that shit!

Mengele often awoke from dreams sweating and sure
That his patients would learn a trick to generate biological anesthetics
He needed the feedback of sound to really understand the human body
“Prayer or pleading” he used to say with a wink to his bartender after work

Sometimes I worry that my nervous system
Might have a Mengelian agenda of its own

That I am woven into a potential torture chamber seems clear
but then I remember that I can always pull the tooth or cut off the ear

High School

But we know don’t we class?
The quiet ones and the kids at the back
The Morse nonsense of tapping chalk

The jocks seemed just off
One muscle in one place way too grown
A small sickness perhaps in nerves or in bone

I knew the story of how I got here
But not exactly how I did

There were very large mirrors in each bathroom
Some slightly convex some slightly concave
The exit signs contradicted each other
Some things just don’t get along I suppose

At night my parents laughed and drank wine
They gave me a new nickname every week

“I’m going to high school!” I said to a girl I knew
A pretty girl too, she vigorously nodded “Yes!”
Her perfume came off her in layers
Like she’d worn hundreds of different scents

In the smoking section everyone was silent
In the office was a grinning secretary
Some portables seemed too far away
And I couldn’t ever remember my age

But that’s how things are right?

Charm

I’m a bad bad man
(I take it in the can!)
There was nothing to run from at all
(but I ran)

I smell the blood in your matted hair
with your nodding to nothingness
and to everywhere

After all I was
wasn’t I

–

Eric Dittmar lives in Ajax, a town in Ontario, Canada. He has a mechanical engineering degree from Cleveland State University. He recently worked for EllisDon Construction building a condominium in Miami that was called Infinity at Brickell; it was his first real job. He has two wonderful cats, Quark and Toast Jr.

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