Two Poems by Lucia Cordell Getsi

Intensive Care

A young resident walks me past my fear

to a small office and tells me to wait. I hear

nothing but the blood in my ears. Whenever I’ve needed

to prepare for something I cannot imagine, I’m led

to a small room like this, just down a hall

to the right, or left, sterile, functional

for waiting, then for hearing news. A phone blinks

its silent buttons, blue, red, pink,

my eye stick on the blue, the immaculate desk,

the chair where her father huddles, risking

his manhood to weep, to reach for my hand with hands

that fall like birds through trees, chin to chest to arm to land

on his knees, then dart back up to his face. I think I know

the next step like a memory, sorrow

pulling like an undertow to the central sea

of loss, emptying farther still into pools of grief

where I’ve buried my most beloved. Except this child

who keeps swimming out like a spirit called

back to the living, who has heard the songs of the dead

and hums them softly to me, under her breath.

I’ve heard that singing before, a breath

turned wrong side out, the rattle of death

in her lungs this morning.

                                                        I am called.

But nothing prepares me for what I see, my child

In her body of pain, hooked to machines. Grief

comes up like floodwater. Her body floats on a sea

of air that is her bed, a force field of sorrow

that pulls me to her side. I touch pain I know

I have never felt, move into a new land

of nightmare. She is so still. Only one hand

moves, fingers oscillate like water plants risking

the air. Machines line the desks,

the floor, the walls, confirm the deep pink

of her skin in rapidly ascending numbers. One eye blinks.

Then again. This must be language, a purely functional

spelling of speech. H-O-T. I sprint down the hall

for bags of ice, my breath swings like lead

in my chest. In seconds I’m the focus of need

so great I’ve forgotten any world but this one here.

I -L-O-V-E -Y-O-U, we spell. Even the alphabet tenses with fear.

Excision

You know marrow is deep, the most

inward trail, beneath the wedged

incision in your hip, past

flesh, the waste of muscle, all

connectives, through bone

the surgeon’s screw begins

the twisting dig

Elephants in their private

ritual lift the bones

of kin, the trunks swing

rhythms old as stones

and thunderous as jungle

rain, they carry remains

of family inward, from

desecration

You are turned to me, buried

in my arms. I hold your bones

and smooth your hair, my face

a mouth to kiss you, whisper

how gracefully elephants sway

toward the interior. The screw

grinds through your backbone, marrow

reddens in the light

                       and nothing kills

your pain, I cannot carry

you inside, your taut limbs, ivory

as petrified skin, slender

tusks, they tuck like family

in the vault

of my terrified embrace

Lucia Cordell Getsi has published four books of poetry: Teeth Mother Letters, Moonsquilt, 1984, 1993; Bottleships: for Daughters, Aquila, 1986; No One Taught This Filly to Dance, Pikestaff, 1989; Intensive Care, New Rivers Press, 1992.

Her poems have been published in such periodicals as The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Tamaqua, Mississippi Valley Review, The Laurel Review, Whetstone, Benchmark Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Southern California Anthology, Nimrod: Awards IX, and many others.