Gabriel (6 page)

One Metro card one Massachusetts driver’s license

The body is of a well-developed well-nourished

Average frame 182 pounds 70 inches

White male

The nose and facial bones are palpably intact

The trachea is in the midline

The torso is unremarkable

There are no injuries

To his upper and lower extremities

His genitalia show a normal circumcised male

Postmortem Changes

There is moderate symmetrical rigor mortis

On the upper and lower extremities neck and jaw

Lividity is pink posterior and fixed

The body is cool

Subsequent to refrigeration

Evidence of Injuries

External and Internal

None

His brain weighed 1530 grams

And had a glistening leptomeninges

The cerebral hemispheres were symmetrical

His heart weighed 380 grams

The left ventricular measured 1.3 cm

And the right measured 0.5 cm thick

His right lung weighed 1000 grams

His left lung weighed 700 grams

The bronchi were slightly hyperemic

His liver weighed 2130 grams

His gallbladder contained 8 ml

Of green viscus bile without stones

His spleen weighed 440 grams

There were no enlarged lymph nodes

The bone marrow was unremarkable

His right kidney weighed 180 grams

His left kidney weighed 190 grams

His bladder contained 250 ml of straw-colored urine

His stomach contained 20 ml of bloody fluid

His vermiform appendix was present

His small and large intestines were unremarkable

Specimens were submitted for histologic evaluation

Specimens were submitted for toxicological evaluation

There was no postmortem radiology

Sexual assault kit was made and prepared

DNA card prepared pulled scalp hair and fingerprints

Were taken and retained on file

Special consideration for autopsy was done

Without water all utensils and preparation were made

To remove and provide all blood or fluids back to the body

He loved twisting rides on roller coasters

Coins fell from his pockets

When he was upside down

He loved tossing quarters into claw games

The noisy clang of slot machines

The soft light of casinos

He loved Nickel City in Northbrook

Twenty games for a buck he played

Four hundred games in an hour

I sat at the bar drinking a Diet Coke

And reading Apollinaire while he hurtled

From game to game in Dave & Buster’s

He did not like family vacations in Wisconsin

That trip to Puerto Rico was a disaster

Thanksgiving in Texas did not elicit thanks

He loved Six Flags and Sea World

At Disneyworld he met the Ninja Turtles

I once took him to a Power Rangers concert

It surprised me how much he loved

Retracing Columbus’s journey to the New World

On a high school field trip

He adored cruising back into Rome

And he condescended to me

Because I’d never been to Lisbon

He loved absinthe he said he drank it once

In Europe it tasted decadent

Like a girl who smelled of licorice and smoke

He loved the way the Mediterranean

Spread out and spanned the centuries

He loved to walk through the ruins

He loved his 2000 green Acura Integra

Which he drove at high speeds

On deserted roads and winding highways

He loved pretending he could play the hi-hat

And crash cymbal like Travis Barker

The tattooed drummer for Blink-182

He loved the metal bands we heard

On Randall’s Island in 2006

Disturbed Atreyu and Bad Acid Trip

He never gave up watching
Dragon Ball Z

Pokémon
and
Rocko’s Modern Life

He loved the moment in
The Boondock Saints

When Murphy says
we’re sorta like 7-Eleven

We’re not always doing business

But we’re always open

He thought Massachusetts and Connecticut

Were boring states there was nothing

To do there he loved New York City

Something was always going on

He loved the Yankees and the Giants

He hated the Red Sox and the Patriots

He loved strong coffee specialty beers

Tamar’s oatmeal cookies California burgers

Spicy Thai Indian and Mexican food

Dogs were his natural friends

He bet all his money on the long shot

At the racetrack he won big a couple of times

He loved his twenty-second birthday

Above all others it was the night of nights

Night of celebration

Gabe was my best friend

Gabe was my right-hand man

Gabe was my wingman

I could tell you a lot of stories

I wrote them down we did everything

Together I think I’ll drop it

And tell you what it felt like

To be with Gabe

On his twenty-second birthday

We went to a tattoo parlor

To watch an Ultimate Fighting match

On pay-per-view

We pooled four hundred bucks

And bet it on the underdog Cain Velasquez

Gabe said his head looks like a brick

We needed him to beat the UFC heavyweight champ

Brock Lesnar the baddest man on the planet

I once saw him pulverize a guy

I was nervous because everyone was shouting

About the killer in the octagon

And everything was on the line

But Gabe just gave me that little smirk

Of his you know the one I mean

It said
we got this

That night we won big

We won really big

We pocketed eight hundred bucks

We danced on the tables

While others drank themselves under them

We painted the town red

We bounced over to a club downtown

It was so crowded no one was getting in

But Gabe convinced the doorman

We were part of the wedding party

Just like in the movie
Wedding Crashers

It was an after-party for a Chinese wedding

Gabe kept telling everyone

We were distant relatives of the bride and groom

We were just wearing our regular clothes

Jeans and t-shirts but Gabe was insistent

He had a baby face people wanted to believe him

Even when they knew he was lying

But once we got inside the party

The Chinese girls could barely speak English

And so we couldn’t talk to them

We picked up Pepi too at the end of the night

We jumped on the backs of some monster

Garbage trucks to hitch a ride

The garbage men chased after us with baseball bats

But they were too fat to catch us

I can still hear them wheezing after us

We ended up at Union Square at dawn

Gabe headed off with his last forty bucks

Where are you going
I told him

That’s your last cash why don’t you

Save some of it for tomorrow
but he said

We’ve just had the night of our lives

And these homeless guys deserve a good breakfast

He bought two pies and twenty-four donuts

And handed them out to the homeless men in Union Square

When I’m standing in line at the DMV

And the stoner next to me

Starts ranting about his parole officer

The dude has anger management issues

He’s profiling me I couldn’t get there

Because my grandmother was sick

When his buddy rolls into Big Nic’s wearing

Cargo shorts and an Oscar the Grouch t-shirt

And I slip him a fifty-dollar bill

When one of his goofball friends swears

He will never take hard drugs again

And then drops three tabs of acid

And winds up in an institution in Tennessee

When I recite
Surprised by joy

Impatient as the Wind

And think about Wordsworth’s daughter Catherine

His six-year-old son Thomas his daughter Dora

Whose death caused him to quit

When someone’s nephew someone’s

Brother’s oldest son a drunken teenager

Gets stuck on the railroad tracks

When I see fresh-faced soldiers

Hurrying off the plane in Atlanta

And everyone begins to clap

When the truck swerves into my lane

When lightning strikes a tree

While I am walking across a field

When the young anesthesiologist

Puts a needle into my arm

And I start to go under

My friends studied him in high school

As the inventor of Polish poetry

A sixteenth-century humanist

Who translated the psalms into rhymed verse

And believed in meeting the world

With equanimity

But the poor bastard changed his mind

When Death swaddled up

His two-and-a-half-year-old daughter

I love him for calling on griefs

And laments from every quarter

O tears of Heraclitus O dirges of Simonides

To help him mourn the child

Whom Oblivion obliterated

With such uncanny force

We learned in school that funeral elegies

Laments and threnodies

Were reserved for big public occasions

And so the classical poets sang

Of heroes who fell valiantly in battle

Military leaders and philosopher-kings

But Kochanowski could not bear

To see his daughter’s flowered dress

Her smooth ribbons her gold-clasped belt

And so he called on Urszula

To come back and haunt him again

As a shadow a dream or a ghost

Wisdom for me was castles in the air

I’m hurled like all the others

From the topmost stair

Yamanoue worried that his son’s soul

Would not know the right road

To take in the underworld

And so he offered to pay the fee

Of the courier from the realms below

To carry Furuhi on his back

A father broods that his son

Is wandering on the wrong road

Lost in the otherworld without a coat

I beseech you with offerings

Be true and lead him

On the straight road to heaven

Izumi could not understand

How her daughter could be cremated

And then vanish into the empty sky

When even the snow

The fragile white snow

Falls downward into this world

During the memorial service

She was distressed by the temple bell

That kept ringing and ringing

Listen to the resonance

Listen to the sound of longing

The sound of loss

Why did he have to keep striking

That holy bell for Naishi

Each strike was a blow

The grieving poets are distracted

By so many thoughts

The wrong road the falling snow the bell

I wonder if the
Pearl
poet

Was grieving for his lost daughter

Or mourning on commission

For someone else’s gem

Whom he turned into a dream vision

Of spotless radiance

I understand the trope the fantasy

Of the erstwhile father the jeweler

Who is so caught

In the chill grip of grief

Over his poor imprisoned pearl

That he falls asleep at her grave

And discovers his precious

As a grown woman

Glittering on the other side

I’m a little rocky on the theology

But I like the idea that a pearl

Is also a two-year-old child

Who is also a royal young woman

Who is also the immortal soul

Who is also the heavenly city

Love could still hurt him

When he awoke in a green garden

Where she lay buried

I wish I could believe in the otherworld

I wish I could believe in a place

Of reunions outside of memory

The
Pearl
poet was baffled

By what he saw in a mound of earth

In the darkened dungeon of sorrow

I do not understand how she could write

Anything but elegies for the stillborn

And God-struck

Margaretha Susanna von Kuntsch

Lost eight sons and five daughters

I do not understand how she could stand

Anything Christian or otherwise

Desperation spoke to me in her voice

And I carried around her poem

Occasioned by the Death of My Fifth Born

Little Son the Little Chrysander or CK

On the 22nd of November 1686

Where she compares herself

To the warrior-king Agamemnon

Since all her hopes and joys

Had burned in the tomb

With her ninth child

Sacrificed to the knife of death

Who will give me the courage

Who will sharpen my crafty pen

When my blood is stirred

To try to describe my feelings in words