Laughter

Damen O’Brien

They read him obituaries, they took him to the cancer ward

to meet the children with clouds for eyes and shaven heads,

they strapped him to a chair and made him watch war stock

crackling with early optimism and late with the rolls of dead,

they gave him gloves and took him to a poisoned beach,

sticky with its slick and let him bag the petrels, the choking

fish. He saw flags raised and taken down, statues cast and

desecrated. Through a crack in history, he saw the first tests

and their clouds suck and warp the desert sky, blow glass

from sand; leather boots on foreign soil; union jacks and pox

and things done in hidden rooms and thumpings buried

in a box and salt and fire; trebuckets and racks. He stood

amid the crowds that watched the bonfires, that listened

to conspiratorial words and when none of that would work,

they shone a light into his eyes, listened to his pulse, took

a tincture of his blood, a smear of saliva upon a glass.

Yet he continued laughing, chuckling like river rolling stone—

giggles, chortles, roars, until they had to stuff their ears,

until they had to tape his mouth. They could see his shoulders

shake, the blinking of his eyes held lines of hidden laughter.

Beneath the tape his mouth smiled. It made them shiver

to see him smile. It hurt to look upon his smile, it made

them bitter. The curl at the corner of his mouth goaded

them to go home, shout at their wives and kick the cat.

Finally they opened up a window in his brain and pulled

a bloody piece of meat out of the folds and his laughter

stopped like a closed lock. His mirth had been a tumour

pressing on his thoughts, an aberrant gene bubbling

underneath his skull, anodising the rough unhappy world

with gold. His smiles were done, they could take off the

masking tape, the bindings on his wrists. When they

showed him scenes of death, photographs of anguish,

or let him smell the smoke of extinction, he finally wept.

They could discharge him with some relief and put away

all the souvenirs of hell mankind has made or consumed.

The job was done. It is not the fate of humanity to be happy.

DAMEN O’BRIEN is a multi-award-winning poet based in Brisbane. His prizes include The Moth Poetry Prize and the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. His poems have been published in New Ohio Review, Poetry Wales, Aesthetica, Arc Poetry Journal and other journals. Damen’s latest book, Walking the Boundary, is available through Pitt Street Poetry.