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.
