Acc(i)dents (Do)n’t Happen, by Sean West

Acc(i)dents (Do)n’t Happen
 
Hand over their snapshots, I’ll make
them somersault through their summers 
back into my childhood kiddy pool
 
I’ll see them reanimate into an alternate 
timeline where accidents don’t happen
How will our future generations 
 
reconcile us with this moment
presented to them in a poem: his chest 
caved in, fingers dismembered eight 
 
feet below him in the deep, her dive 
like a cat thrown from a high window: 
right-angled legs stiff with cramps
 
fists creepy crawly obtuse. Whose water 
pistol was that? Did you bounce your baby
sister’s head off the backboard? Was it 
 
an accident? He braces for the impact of skin 
with concrete water: the murderous thunderclap
chides us inside. Maybe I hyperextended 
 
his back too far. I may have splayed
her arms too wide at play time. Chlorine 
spilled from their throats onto my sleeves
 
and burned my skin. The board broke
before I could fall up the final steps
Maybe I had a hand in this: brace 
 
for impact—Maybe I wanted 
it to break like that.

Sean West

Sean West holds a BFA in Creative and Professional Writing. In 2019, he was shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. His work has been published in StylusLit, Stilts Journal, and Baby Teeth Journal, among others. He lives and works in Brisbane. Find more of him at www.callmemariah.com.