Permeable
When I was five my mother called
old women to lift my shirt and say
german measles,
though the doctor only said measles
with a needle in my arm.
There were so many:
Penicillin in my hip and a dead leg
for three days, no bananas for fifteen years,
no cats and a bottle of benadryl in every room
with a k on top, and so saying
pediatrician
was easier than saying hero.
They saved me
from pneumonia, strep throat, asthma, chronic
sinusitis; pneumonia again, blood in my lungs, tuberculosis
tests (like everything else, so many needles in my arm);
ear infection, throat infection, lung infection: idiopathic;
pneumonia again, and every other winter a week in bed,
doctors' orders, pill bottles lined up and I speak
pseudoephedrine, diphenhydramine, acetaminophen, sertraline,
until the words come easily; depersonalization, anxiety,
suicidal ideation, comorbid major depression.
They’re only words, after all.
But when I carve deep into their pathogen
only pathos remains.
It tells me to gather up bananas,
cats and poetry,
laugh at the pollen on my grave.
(What do you think? I'm worried that in cutting so much I might have lost what little narrative thread I started with, but I'm not sure I liked what I started with all that much. In truth I'm too grumpy and guarded for poetry today, but I had to have something for class tonight.)
Monday, March 08, 2010
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1 comment:
Kari, I like the additions at the end. I think it makes the transition a little smoother and for some reason I really saw the degree of emotional complexity that was already there in the ending this time around.
I agree with you about not being sure about the cuts. There is still a clear narrative though. You cut the reflection on shiny metal to prevent the disease caused by rusty metal. I liked that, but the poem still works with out it. You also cut a few items from your list in the third paragraph (insomnia and the last, to some extent all encompassing diagnosis: the writer's disease). I think the cut of those two from the list is a greater loss than the shiny metal/rusty metal bit.
The punctuation has a bit of an interesting effect in the third stanza. When I had read the poem the first time I assumed the adjective "idiopathic" refered to pneumonia again, not the series of infections. Hmmm.
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