Lady Will Live



Tomorrow I am going to a poetry reading at The Whitman House in Huntington. It is a launch party for an anthology of poems by physicians. This sounds really interesting to me for a few reasons. When my father was sick and dying I dealt with doctors regularly and was appalled at the lack of empathy that surrounded many of them. I wrote a lot about that time, and would like to see what doctor perspective is like about what they do. One of the poems I wrote about doctors is below. Also, the dog we adopted has pneumonia and I have been administering an IV drip every night and letting her sit in the steamy bathroom and then pounding her chest. She's also taking antibiotics and she is getting better. There is such a rush in curing her, and I wonder at what it means to actual doctors to cure. Poems by me and doctor poets below.

Bug

Here comes the deadly trio.
Today they're here to talk
About feeding tubes,
And how fast the cancer is going to spread,
Because chemo charred your throat
And you can't have any more treatment.
Doctors 1, 2, and 3 look us in the eyes and smirk.
We are troublesome, stupid, and nagging as gnats on the beach.
We are so stupid we think we have the right
To ask questions. To stare back. To notify their superiors.
They shoot hospice options and dire scenarios
At the man in the bed who can sort
Out nothing they say. He can hear though
That he's despised in an impersonal way,
The way you might recoil at a roach,
Or a mouse in your clean kitchen cabinet.
If the good doctors could do what they want
They would order a nurse,
(Those doers of dirty work)
To crush you under crepe-soled shoes,
And mop up the mess.
Silverfish; insignificant; air breather.

M.J. Tenerelli


Grotesque

The city has tits in rows.
The country is in the main--male,
It butts me with blunt stub-horns,
Forces me to oppose it
Or be trampled.

The city is full of milk
And lies still for the most part.
These crack skulls
And spill brains
Against her stomach.

William Carlos Williams


Night-Blooming Cereus
– for Carol

That summer you were home dying of cancer
the daily news shrieked of lightning-sparked
wild fires, hundred-year floods and a
flurry of shark attacks in Florida –
a boy no older than your son, his arm
torn off one night as he played in the ocean.

And you with your arm swollen
and dead to you –
listening to it all on the radio,
sipping ice water through a straw,
the chemo making you puke,
propped among pillows in the guest room,
a part of you knowing we are all guests here.

One morning a woman on the freeway
bridge just blocks from your home
straddled the railing in the middle of rush hour
inciting a mile-long traffic jam –
irate motorists late for their jobs,
a heckling busload of commuters
goading her to jump.

How can people be so heartless? You asked.
And later, through the fog of chemo and morphine
you called us suddenly one evening –
the Cereus in your kitchen
was growing this most amazing flower,
the magnificent white bud opening almost before your eyes.
And we should come over quickly,
you didn't want us to miss it,
its dying fragrance soon to fill the house.


Peter Pereira