Suicide Cascades, Joy Katz

The saddest time in my life was also the time the most people said, you look beautiful.

There was a poet I would meet for coffee, he was married,

he wanted to know would I have an affair, would I, what was I doing,

he eyed my well-turned runner's legs

There was a poet who killed herself

The last time I saw her she made a wide generous gesture, arms outswept,

in a room where people stood strapping tape on cartons full of books.

“Four dollars,” said the poet, swung

her arms as if she were walking through a field

of empty Saturday nothing-to-do—

The saddest time in my life was also the time I wrote about furniture,

           the heavier the better.

A butcher block says live here.

Says fish on ice, knife marks, steady steady, loaves of bread.

The poet tried to reach her therapist before she killed herself

is a place you can change the ending.

Open her book to the poem about the

evidence, you want ambulance, you want knife marks you want serious, you want serious you want hard rain, noise, turbines, thumbnails

“Come to a party,” someone says to a woman who resembles me

exactly, feature for feature, but isn’t me—

                                                                   on the saddest day of my life

I sit cross-legged at a party, pretend to eat a piece of pie.

Pie: what world is that from?

Four dollars, said the poet

four dollars in a meadowful of cows

                                                               four dollars we’re aiming toward heaven

four dollars shakespearing over earth's curve.