so curious to me
In Poetry News: Mark Irwin's Bright Hunger has been awarded the 2005 Colorado Book Award in Poetry; Eduardo C. Corral be a Winter/Spring 2006 Fellow at The MacDowell Colony; C. Dale Young has a poem in this issue of Poetry; and I finally posted the November Up-Dates on my Contests, Submissions, Awards & Deadlines link. Remember, just because there are a hideous number of December 1st deadlines doesn't mean come mid-month I won't be up-dating the page once again. There is great joy in slogging through the slush pile so you won't have to.
Warning: Scantily Clad Info Dump Alert!
My old friend Michelle (Goodeve) Dakin sent me this photo she snapped when I was a wee Zachary back in the glory days of 1992, we think, at Michigan State University. I draw your attention to this, not because of my hair or The Animalia Wall Freize by Graeme Base or even the styling Jimi Hendrix t-shirt I wore,1 but for the tattered remains of my left hand, wrapped in bandages in the photo, when I cut off the pads of my fingers and thumb in a deli-meat-slicer accident.
Yes, there was a time in my dim past when I had a job as Mr. Zack The Deli Boy. I'd wait in this back room of McDonel Dormitory's cafeteria and craft hand-made sandwiches for all who asked. Right, "craft" might be too strong of a word, but if memory serves right, I used a lot of cheese. Anyway, part of my job involved slicing up all the meaty shanks and roasted thighs and grilled calves on one of those stainless steel deli meat slicers that would make a: j'zing/ j'zing/j'zing noise as meat passed through them. Perhaps you can see where this story is going?
The radio was on, a song I do not now recall but just know I liked it was blaring and I wasn't paying attention. I had just finished a hank of roast beast, reached out and the machine made its j'zing/ j'zing/j'zing ruckus, except there wasn't any hank left to be cut. I think I splattered a lot of my blood all over myself as I pulled my hand back, my finger tips dangling, because my supervisor bustled over and said the very worse thing possible to a person thinking of going into shock: "Ohmygod, he'sgoingintoshock! IthinkI'mgoingtobesick!" Thanks, my dear. I don't recall a lot after that.
They loaded me up in the ambulance that came to collect me, my hand parts in a bucket of red ice water. A friend of mine, Liz, was looking out her dorm window (disasters warranting ambulances were always big attention getters) and said: "hey, that person on the stretcher looks like Zack … wait, it is Zack!" My father was teaching at the time and the department secretary apparently entered, announcing to the 200+ students that the professor's child had had "an accident" and was being taken to the hospital. My brother, Eli, recalls that when they arrived at the hospital and went into the waiting area of ER, all he could hear was the long, drawn-out scream of his brother getting sewn up with no pain-killer. You see, after eighteen stitches in each finger, as the mealymouth RN, who seemed to be finishing up a 54-hour shift, stuck the last stitch into the meaty part of my pad, the pain killer wore off and I shouted: "I can feel that!" "Quit whining," was his reply, "it's only one stitch left."
What is odd, to me is that while I have no sensations in my fingers on my left hand anymore I can still feel that last stitch when a storm is coming in and my bones ache.
- Oi! Jim Behrle; here is one for your: What the Hell is Up With Your Author Photo? series! [back]