Waiting Room Reading
I’m reading a six month old
Sports Illustrated.
I know the coach
they’re glorifying
is fired by September,
the great running back hope
busts his ankle in the
third game of the season.
My symptoms are
flicking through page after page
looking for the one
low light in some athlete’s life
that they know turns into
a feel good story.
But there’s no cure here.
So I pick up a year old Business Week
whose headline promises
better days ahead.
We all know how that turned out.
I’m trying to be optimistic for the future
by seeing how the past did it.
But days gone by
never do get good at
predicting how it all comes out.
“The doctor will see you now.”
the nurse says.
Well at least he won’t be
seeing me back then.
My Checkup
It’s not the light
promenading down my heart
or my words read sideways
but EKG, X-ray; urine sample,
rubber-fingered rectal exam.
None of the invisible shock
waves of the head but reflex
test, lung-capacity graph,
and blood sucked up into a needle.
No one’s powdering my soul
for prints or running biopsies
on each reminiscence.
They’re telling me I’m
fine for what I am, the latest
way to tell me nothing.
Dear Brain Surgeon
So the brain is cut wide open.
Tell me doc, what do you see in there?
Any clue as to who I am?
Anything in there that doesn’t need
a functioning body to represent me,
that can pulse on forever
like that Energizer bunny?
My head gave way to your scalpel.
Even that pudding-like organ
of neurons and axons and dendrites
is putty in your surgeon’s hands.
But what of the spiritual core?
Is there anything left
when you run out of Latin names?
A soul?
An object so deeply embedded
that even you, with all your skills,
can’t go there?
Of course, you’re not
messing about in my cerebellum
to verify my suitability for the hereafter.
It’s that tumor that has your attention.
A vengeful God doesn’t come into your equation.
But a malignant or benign lump does.
And then hours alter
you’ve put me back together,
given me the all-clear,
I awake to a chorus
of “It’s a miracle!”
My parents, my siblings, my lover –
but not you.
Not someone who really knows me.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.
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