Poetry by Dara Goodale
PERFECT CONDUCTOR

when he was eight   he stuck a fork
      into an electric outlet
he fried the nerve endings
    in his right thumb
his sense of touch    swept away
by the current
if his father hadn’t been at home
to rip his clenched fist    off
  the metal      now welded
to the wall socket
his heart would have stopped
instead
        he died twelve years later
when heroin      surged
free      through blue wire
veins

before that august     I asked what it was like
     to conduct energy
he told me   how electrons taste like   shots
of copper     that burn on their way
downstream        that bite
     with AC teeth
in zaps    of arcane power
how muscles contract      till you lose
control of your     body
to spasms       galvanized      like when you OD
   and all you see    are white-hot
sparks         that lunge at you
like they know   you did something
you can’t take back               

the part he left unsaid:
     the only
time   he had ever felt important
was when    his hand   alone
completed the circuit

Dara Goodale (they/she) is a Romanian-American lesbian, poet, and university student living in Lausanne, Switzerland. They write about grief, mental health, and identity. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Underbelly Press, The B’K, Thimble Literary Magazine, and The Passionfruit Review.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #51.

Submit to Cleaver!