National Poetry Month: Em Dial,

 

Side Effects

 

Summer of Sumatriptan
autoinjectors plunged
into my thigh as I crumpled
in relief off the long side

of my bed. Summer after
college’s years of timing
pills against liquor. Summer
of drought everywhere:

throat, tear duct, grassland.
Summer like an oasis
between spring and autumn’s
deluge of flare ups.

I wish he and I could have shared
a drink in the respite. I’ll admit
the thought never crossed my mind
that he was more death-close than I.

In past summers, I might have
been skeptical of surgeons,
but in the summer of escape
from my condition’s reddening,

I had hope enough to not
wish you luck beforehand.
Summer of falling at the foot
of the bed at the news.

What was I supposed to do with
summer. I wanted to scream
the word cousin until you re-emerged
like a late-season daisy.
The summer after Steven,
the empty bottle, the bridge.
Guilt’s aftershocks shook me
until the bedside floor

became unbearable. Night sweats,
dry mouth, drowsy days
under July’s sun. Grief,
side effect of beating the odds.

 

 

 

Em Dial (she/they) is a writer born and raised in the Bay Area of California, currently living in Toronto, Ontario. They are a Kundiman Fellow and recipient of the 2020 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award and 2019 Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award. The author of In the Key of Decay (Palimpsest Press, 2024), her work can also be found in the Literary Review of Canada, Arc Poetry Magazine, the Permanent Record Anthology from Nightboat Books, and elsewhere.