First Responder Who Only Fainted During Training Videos
Hannah Baker Saltmarsh
You think to him, but not out loud,
When your cheek falls off, this is what
you usually do, hold it. Keep it still on you.
What more than havoc is rising from the man’s
cheekbones, the cheek half-torn?
On the walkway, all his grocery bags
hooked on his handlebars threw his bicycle
to one side, where he lies on the tracks.
Even if you swooned during the simulations,
here you are again, a thirty-year old halting causeway
traffic, tearing his suit off, oxford shirt, and paisley bow tie to swim
(from practice founding urban schools, splicing a shirt
not out of dogged rage so much as clarity,
and running home to cast it the rest of the way
aside). Soon, you’ve arisen on a swaying rope
to the causeway’s lip, with the one-man crash victim,
sullen from the shame of fiddling with texts
all the way over the edge.
Or the other time a guy hits a
moat-crater full of rainwater,
catapults off his bike, falls hard, but his buddy,
drunk, keeps shaking and slapping him.
You reassure him he’s not dead.
It’s a concussion. You want him to stop
hitting his own friend. It’s the time of night that disappears
into the early sunrise barely-legal strippers walk out
into, wearing stretch pants and carrying Coach
bags with Paris Hilton perfume they shower
on their vaginas. At dawn, everyone gets to see
the world afresh. The drunk friend laughs,
weeps into the stalled-asleep biker’s armpit,
stops trying to wake the heart he hears.
When your cheek falls off, this is what
you usually do, hold it. Keep it still on you.
What more than havoc is rising from the man’s
cheekbones, the cheek half-torn?
On the walkway, all his grocery bags
hooked on his handlebars threw his bicycle
to one side, where he lies on the tracks.
Even if you swooned during the simulations,
here you are again, a thirty-year old halting causeway
traffic, tearing his suit off, oxford shirt, and paisley bow tie to swim
(from practice founding urban schools, splicing a shirt
not out of dogged rage so much as clarity,
and running home to cast it the rest of the way
aside). Soon, you’ve arisen on a swaying rope
to the causeway’s lip, with the one-man crash victim,
sullen from the shame of fiddling with texts
all the way over the edge.
Or the other time a guy hits a
moat-crater full of rainwater,
catapults off his bike, falls hard, but his buddy,
drunk, keeps shaking and slapping him.
You reassure him he’s not dead.
It’s a concussion. You want him to stop
hitting his own friend. It’s the time of night that disappears
into the early sunrise barely-legal strippers walk out
into, wearing stretch pants and carrying Coach
bags with Paris Hilton perfume they shower
on their vaginas. At dawn, everyone gets to see
the world afresh. The drunk friend laughs,
weeps into the stalled-asleep biker’s armpit,
stops trying to wake the heart he hears.
Listen to Hannah read the poem here:
Working notes
The poem begins with a luscious superman-esque hero who saves drunken, careless cyclists he encounters in the middle of the night; rescues a texting trucker who falls off a bridge. Yet, the supposed hero of the poem, clearly male and erotic, has a weakness, often scripted as female: he faints when he sees disturbing First Responder Training videos. A weak stomach doesn’t stand in his way when he is in the presence of actual danger, and the same courage he exhibits in traumatic situations has motivated his passion for educating youth. The poem, then, rescues the ideal superman from himself, and allows for a complex heroism not limited by patriarchy. Additionally, the young, female strippers at the end of the poem attempt to take the stage as alternative heroines, emerging at dawn with the same right to the morning’s promise as anyone else.
About the author
Hannah Baker Saltmarsh has published in The New Republic, The Yale Review, The Antioch Review, The Denver Quarterly, The Times Literary Supplement, Gulf Coast, and other journals. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of York (UK) and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University or Maryland. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Dillard University and lives with her family in New Orleans.