Category: POETRY

This is another poem–After Too Many Drinks. Hosted by the incomparable Minh on the PHARM.

Read another poem on Minh’s site, prehospitalmed.com.

Head over there and listen to my new podcast! This one is called “Measuring Time.”

Much thanks to Minh for hosting it. You can find him on Twitter as @ketaminh, or through his PHARM site.

Head on over to Minh Le Cong’s site, prehospitalmed.com, and check out my podcast, How we care for each other.

Much thanks to Minh for hosting my poetry!

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear

A strident voice, fierce and clear,

Hanging in the air once I’ve spoken.

My timbre is the merest token

Of tones light, barren, scrubbed clean.

I am not heavy with authority—

I am a whisper. No sonorous tones, mine.

My voice far too rapidly declines,

Drifting among the stones of the shore

Until it fades. There is no more

Except as the beats of the seas endure,

So shall my echoing song waft pure.

As suffering of the waves resides in me,

My hollows roar dimly with the passion of the sea.

I referred to it as “getting sick,”

as though she went to the market

and picked up cancer with a loaf of good bread,

a nice red, and some figs.

“Try the small-cell carcinoma, it’s divine.”

“Aplastic anemia, just wonderful what they’re

doing with Chilean varietals lately.”

As though she brought it home

in a paper bag, nestled with the bread

and the wine and the figs,

seasoned it and roasted it,

plated it with rosemary and au jus,

ate it, sighing over its robust flavor,

a meal she reminded me of later,

sunken eyes shadowed waxen flesh

stretched tight over high cheekbones

describing how she consumed it,

and how it now feasts on her,

on her lungs, on her liver,

the spongy marrow of her bones,

and all along I thought it was something

she could get, something she could catch,

something in the air, universal as breathing,

when the truth is that it caught her.

 

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