In the changing room I strip & slip into a hospital gown & scratchy blue shorts. Some clothes contain metal fibers, the sign says. These can heat up during an MRI & burn your skin. The lab tech, Cody, plunges a needle in my arm & clamps down tight. Had to squeeze it off quick, quite a water hose you’ve got there! The noise in the chamber is gonna be loud, he warns, but he’ll pipe in some music. What would I like to hear? I say jazz singers from the Fifties, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan. He says I got you.

he’s got the whole world
in his hands oh don’t let me
embarrass myself

I’m lying on a slab inside what looks like a high-tech coffin. Cody secures my head in some kind of vise—Gotta be very still—and lowers a hockey-mask thingy like Hannibal Lecter’s an inch from my face. The coffin sucks me in headfirst & the racket starts, clanking, banging, hammering, loud enough to give me an instant migraine. They’re looking for a tumor on my auditory nerve that could be causing my hearing loss & if I’m not stone deaf now, I will be when this is over. In the background, though, Sarah’s crooning Gershwin: Looking everywhere, haven’t found him yet / he’s the big affair I cannot forget / only man I ever think of with regret…

This damn vise is crushing my skull like a rotten pumpkin. If there’s a tumor it’s probably benign, probably won’t kill me, but this noise might. Clanking, banging, hammering—I wish I were deaf right now—& just then Ella & Louis dance in, having loads of fun. Potato! Potahto! Tomato! Tomahto! Let’s call the whole thing off! Cody comes & pulls me out, shoots me full of dye through my IV, then pushes me back in for another five minutes. Then dead silence—am I deaf already? Then I hear myself asking him about the dye. It’s for contrast, to see if you have any abnormalities. 

A tomato on
white bread plenty of mayo
yes that’s the ticket

old things
some are treasures
truly
others, simply old items left which don’t quite fit
the weight of age
what once was
now is, yet altered
trying to look ahead, embrace the now
which almost seems cliche
when so much 
seems, and frankly is, old

the city center,
bright bustle,
young bodies, or
young at heart

looking, under the
incessant skyglow, for
something–
a laugh,
or a love

some travel in a pack,
a few, more desperate,
alone

but all are looking
for one thing,
or another–
something to give,
or something to take

beating hearts,
pleading flesh,
each one,
a soul
unto itself

panoply of bird calls
a United Nations of song
combined under the canopy

Grandmothers talk with
hand songs rich in symphonic
language drenched in love.

The summer air is heavy with the taste of popsicles
Dripping across the horizon
Staining the clouds in shades of red and orange
Leaving behind a sticky film on my summer skin

 Breathe

When I put my pen to paper

The result is only partly mine

The words that flow through me

Only do

Because half of me, is you

Your writings are scarce, but there’s always been a poem on the fridge

The School Bus

In all of your favorite pieces

You recite poetics about how much you love your kids

Oh, honey bunny, honey bunny

You make my life sunny

My funny honey bunny

The song you’ve sung to me countless times, in an exaggerated baritone

You don’t know how much that rhyme means to me

no matter where I am

When I hear it

I’m transported home

Each stanza I transcribe

Will always only be partly mine

Because my love for language was given to me

By the parts of my mind that are half of you

Until the end of time

To my first wife:
Just past teens when hitched
by my uncle priest. You, the
oldest of nine brothers
on a tobacco farm, had
a knack for being the boss
and I, an emergent slug
from six years of seminary, had
a knack for following holy orders.
The early days like dressing 
on a salad, trying out different
flavors until we settled
on log cabin in the wilderness
with two babies (boys of course).
What words could describe how
we survived the blizzard of ‘78?
After that there was lots of thunder
blunder and a flashy rain that washed
away what we had.

Easy now to account for 2 decades
with a sentence or two. We’re country
neighbors and tip our heads when
we pass on the road.

One keeps gently probing,

careful in exposing each layer.

The dig is recorded for review,

the object no further damage

added to what years have done.

The other seems relaxed, casual,

fear betrayed by shifting eyes,

as if the walls could reflect peace,

could absorb the pain caught

in his mind like a spear in bone.

Calls and responses, clinical, soft,

broken at points by friendly banter,

all of it part of the recovery effort.

It’s a long process. The hour is up.

They agree to a session next week.

(after an unattributed photograph of a spear-pierced bone, found at https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=341525778498614&set=a.144253828225811&locale=zh_CN)