Days’ End \ Mickey J. Corrigan

poems by

Mickey J. Corrigan

ISBN: 978-1-59948-646-8, 56 pages, $12

Release Date: November 7, 2017

OUT OF STOCK

Mickey J. Corrigan lives in Florida, where there are no suicide clinics (yet). Her most recent poetry collection is The Art of Bars: Twelve Steps in the War Against the Self (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Project XX, a crime novel, is forthcoming from Salt Publications in the UK.

In this wonderfully dark, meditative exploration of assisted suicide, Mickey J. Corrigan exposes us to the dance from every angle. And while the darkness often leads, it’s the light raging on into the unblinking night that carries us readers through to a new, illuminated perspective. Someone once said suicide was the sincerest form of self-criticism. Mickey J. Corrigan gives us 23 reasons to quit while we’re ahead—or die trying. —Jade Bos, Hookers or Cake

Ever wonder why all the coolest poets and artists offed themselves so ingloriously? Because back in the bad old days, you didn’t have sophisticated options in assisted dying: you had to stick your head in your own damn oven, or stretch your awkward lips around a couple barrels of deliverance . . . and who’s going to clean that up? As Mickey Corrigan elucidates in Days’ End, there is no excuse in these enlightened times to make such a mess. “Know thyself,” said Socrates, “but slip thyself a Mickey first. Makes that good hemlock go down smooth and easy.” I agree with Socrates: Mickey’s got the goods. —Yarrow Paisley, author of I, No Other from Whiskey Tit

On Your Way Out?

Halls lit up like arcades
day and night the same
harsh white glare
padded feet, dark moans, pulsing
monitor beeps
but
in the ICU
they do everything
to keep you alive
long after your body stalls,
collapsed organs like wet mushrooms
releasing toxins
to your foggy brain.

Hospital not for you?

Try the local hospice
midwives of the final light
sit and hold
what’s left
of your hand, absolving
your pain and easing you
out of your final misery
but
like whores of mercy
they only come
to your bed
at your weakest moment.

Before that, palliative care
for the fatally ill
but
not dying. Not yet.

That you?

Doctors and nurses
house call with candy boxes
pain-killing meds
but
laws are laws and
nobody
likes an addict
so just enough
to soften the blows.

These are your only choices
the arcade
the whores
the candy boxes

what’s left for you
your postmodern death.

Days’ End: Your Local Suicide Parlor

Nine a.m. and I turn on lights.
They file in, perch
on plastic seats
in our sterile waiting room.

My day
begins. I check the list
set up rooms.
Through the glass
I watch them.

An elderly man
gray skin and hair
holds hands with a ghost
his wife
chalk face pressed flat.
Illness exhumes,
rinsing her white.

A teenage girl
tats, brass studs and vinyl
weeps and leans
into her mom,
pale stalk
leans away. Shush.

A young couple
lost
in one another’s
darkest eyes,
hold on tight
immersed.

Fluorescent lights
flicker on, flicker off, flicker
with heavy gusts of rain.
I call them by name
one by one;
two by two
they join me
in the interview room.

The oldsters leave
minds changed, more
days without end.

The young couple
glued to each other
flesh, bones—
this is what they’ll miss
most.

I ask, “Gas or drug infusion?”

They will die together, love
like that can last
forever.

I call Mrs. Rathbone next.
Punk rock girl wails
like a child.
Her mother rises, says,
“Darla, it’s God’s will.”
Leaves the girl behind.

I ask, “You want classical or classic rock?”

In the waiting room,
Darla tilts her tats,
wipes her dirty
raccoon eyes and promises,
“I’ll be back the day
I fucking turn
eighteen.”

I nod, I shrug.
This is my job.
I do what needs doing.

Suicide Rules

Tenth leading cause
of death
in the U.S.
and higher
in young adults.

At Days’ End we don’t
encourage youth.
No kids.
Until eighteen we can’t
serve you.

No beer.
No cigarettes.
No handguns.
No death
at Days’ End.

We say to you:
give life more time
it can turn on a dollar
a letter, a visit
from an old friend, new
love.

Come see us
when you’ve given it
all you got.

All. You. Got.

Because our aim
is 100%
accurate.

We never miss.