She whose job it is to ration cigarettes for the insane counts the sticks like Scrooge’s apprentice who was lent to Nurse Ratched. She’s delighted in the numerology of the task.
The men in this halfway house and home forever queue stiffly, misplaced as green tasseling corn growing at highway’s edge, their breakfast in their teeth, each
begging for the peace of nicotine. She looks up, nods. The line moves random
as a pushed chain, each man grasping an empty pack or ziplock bag if it’s come to that.
By anonymous edict, twelve smokes is the per diem. The men do not question the number any more than they ponder each other’s insanity: The three a.m. screamings
or chance piles of human scat left gift-like in their halls. The woman
counts out each ration aloud as close to a hymn as they hear all day.
Her hair is bunned tight as a fist and only her lips move at the counting.
Her eyes remained fixed on each ration, dropping the smokes
neatly into each posturer’s paw from a safe distance of two inches.
Once a man who had rode swift boats and crawled through leeches after Charlie
made the error of reaching up to her hand. She said nothing, but withdrew the dole
and said “Next! ” in a dispassionate drawl. He retreated to the rear of the line.
At last he proffered his paw again. She packed her kit and left him there,
arm extended indefinitely until he left the room
and broke an eight-inch cement block
over the head of his roommate.
Steve Rose
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rationing-cigarettes-to-the-insane/
