Barcode Ode

Checksum and glyph. Razor-slit gaps between
start-markers. Quiet zone. Each explains
itself and all it knows in silent lines
packed tight as eyelashes, the teeth of a comb,
a ventilator’s bellow-squeeze become
stamp-sized. A city in fog, the skyline wan

from across the bay. If Blake saw flecks of sand
as worlds, what trapped infinities of ones
and zeroes might populate these X-dimensions
summoned by a cardinal chirp of light?
Never mind the snapped-on patient ID bracelet,
the IV needle’s pinch as it descends.

Never mind how many hands have touched, dear friend,
your pulse, how the isolation gown-strings slip
open as you grope in and out of sleep.
Aware or not of what the RN says,
you wouldn’t want even these sentences
catching you so prone. Forgive what words offend.

All message and no art, a means of meaning,
tight-lipped and bristly as a sutured mouth,
it can’t deceive. Nor can it tell the truth,
containing multitudes, mute catalogs
dense as baleen, thin as a centipede’s legs,
charred grove of matchsticks after rain still steaming.

• About
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Brian Brodeur

Brian Brodeur is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Some Problems with Autobiography (Criterion Books, 2023), which won the 2022 New Criterion Prize. New poems and literary criticism appear in Hopkins Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Writer’s Chronicle. Founder and Coordinator of the digital interview archive “How a Poem Happens,” Brian lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley. He teaches at Indiana University East.

Also by Brian Brodeur (see all)

• “There Is One End for Everyone”: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary American Literary Ballads - February 19, 2023
• What We Told the Children - September 22, 2022
• “The Sound of the World Alive”: A Conversation with Maurice Manning - September 22, 2022

Author: Brian Brodeur

Brian Brodeur is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Some Problems with Autobiography (Criterion Books, 2023), which won the 2022 New Criterion Prize. New poems and literary criticism appear in Hopkins Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Writer’s Chronicle. Founder and Coordinator of the digital interview archive “How a Poem Happens,” Brian lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley. He teaches at Indiana University East. View all posts by Brian Brodeur