Toby Fitch

Emotion Sickness

   All wobbly all over—
      it’s not so much vertigo
          as an aversion to inversion. Carry
             on: kidding yourself it’s giddiness,
               the bluff of your blood-flow,
                some old neophobia.
               The carrion you
             forget to keep in mind, i.e.
          the equation to your qualm, may be
      in remembering the moment
   of your memory,
 however fractured that keep-
sake has become—
 the closer to broken the better,
   and confronting it
      by donning a monocle helps
          make the ground
             seem farther afield.
               No need to be stable
                to drink at this oblique
               table. In oblivion
             it’s easier being queasy anyway
          and damn near
        impossible to assure
       that certain bleak hauntings
        won’t see you stepping ashore, upside-
          down the morning after,
             a black-and-blue sea
                 hung over
                    the world.