Hillary Kobernick

I am reading Spanish posters
and wondering about stomach aches—
mine, mostly.

It has not yet crossed my mind
that there is a Spanish word
for gynecologist

or that Katherine, who is
barely old enough to drink
and has had more hands

along her uterus than I
have had missed periods,
has kicked me out

of the examining room
because she is embarrassed
and not because I might

understand what the ginecólogo
says about her linings. She is
fluent in everything here

at the clínica hispana. She speaks
every word as practiced as her
second pregnancy

and I speak only stick shift,
lane change, ¿me puedes hacer un favor?
I speak only sí, sí, six years
of textbook Spanish:

gratitude that I have no idea
what is going on.

Laurie Kutchins

Every underworld begins with a rabbit hole, a vent in the earth.
Noisy boys peering down, running home for lanterns and rope, a
Dizzy girl meanwhile tumbling into it. Ledge upon ledge,
Lavender in her hand dropped as a rescue clue.
Eat nothing down here, she remembers from some vague
Story about hunger and adventure, nothing but juicy red
Seeds from an ancient recurring tree.

Candles are so finite in their light. They dwindle, burn out.
After which the eyes learn to adjust to another sight,
Vortex of bat feces, eggs, edges, stalactitic drips.
Even the book-fed doctor comes to trust this place, this
Ragged silence growing in the patient like a nimbus, and
Notes the end of therapy is drawing near. But hesitates.
Speaking of ending can be darker than the endless dark of it.

Jaydn DeWald

I believe my girlfriend may be playing for somebody else in the audience. Her face, when lifted, seems to drift toward the middle-back row of seats. However, I must admit that the auditorium is quite dark—the audience is just a bundle of silhouettes—and she could, therefore, be playing for me while looking at somebody else, a silhouette that perhaps resembles me. Worse things have happened. Indeed, once, on a train, my wheelchair got lodged between two seats, and two big porters had to lug me along the aisle and to the toilet. Nonetheless, I think: Why should I get her song and not her eyes? For the same reason she gets your mind and not your body, I tell myself. My girlfriend bows her head. I cannot bow my head because she may, while I’m not looking, lift her face to, well—to whom seems to matter little anymore. I must admit that I have been playing with myself again: she will no longer be coming home with me. She will linger on, here, with the cocktail-toting crowd. Her eyebrows rise. Her fingers sprinkle among the high keys. Yet I believe she may know that I am here: I am the only silhouette, after all, sitting in the red-carpeted aisle, pretending to conduct her.

Aracelis Girmay

Abrigette, evenings you are my head.
I think of you at night & then in sleep, bricks
of your house stacked neatly, your dogs & your cats,
& I wonder if you are one hundred now, but think,
Sometime, you must have walked out into it,
the bejackled sky, sky all dressed with lightning, out
into what was there. & did it sing your old husband’s name?
Or come to you in the voice of one of your brothers?
& did you answer back to it? Or did you
not even hear it at all, instead continue
to wash a kitchen window, white rag in hand,
as though trying to clean a great glass-eye
from which you hoped
to see more clearly, or, perhaps,
be seen more clearly? & was it the sky, in fact,
that mistook you for someone wanting relief—
that understood the signal wrong
& thought you to be ready, the rag in your hand to be
a small white flag waving? & so, out of obedience, came down
with all its ghosts & foxes, to take you
quick or slow. & did it wait there, on your front lawn,
as you had seen it do before with other neighbors?
Did it take a seat by the side house window? Or dance
on the tops of your cypresses? Did it spend days
up there? Or days touching its face to flowers on their plots,
learning their names? Or did it come quickly
& take you by your hand? & is it true? Like I have dreamed?
Did you walk out into it, the night, the way one walks
into the cold, cold ocean? Slowly first, then plunging—
head under, everything under.

Elizabeth J. Coleman

If I were a musical instrument, I’d be
a guitar, or violin, one that cries out,

the way the clarinet belted out
Smile When Your Heart is Breaking

on the A train last night.
My father raised me on standards

played by ear with giant hands
that stretched across piano keys,

Someone to Watch Over Me
in F# Major, his specialty.

He didn’t have to hit
a white key until the 7th note.

Ginette Neveu played her violin, as if
she too knew she’d die young.

You hear it in the music, see it
in the way she cocks her head.

So when I play my guitar for patients
at our local cancer hospital—

South American music:
Barrios, Villa-Lobos—and hear

the sexy rhythms, I’m playing
in an outdoor café instead,

in Buenos Aires or Santiago, while
the patients sip a full-bodied Malbec.

For while it’s winter here,
           there it is summer.

Wendy Wisner

Weaning

is out the window, along with a tinge 

of yellow on the oak trees.  Last night I dreamt 

I took my college job back—typing, data entry—

and rushed home to pick you up from school.  

I saw a flash 

of your shiny blue sneakers, then lost you.

All morning airplanes cresting in the sky,

car doors slamming, children screaming.   

You wake up thinking you’ve peed your pants

and I unbutton my nightgown

to nurse you.  While you suck I wonder

if there’s any milk left, when you’ll wean,

if anyone at school will be able to tell,

perhaps by looking at your lips—

Maya Klauber

I awake in a hospital bed to what could 

only be a thousand tiny jellyfish infusing 

my veins. Typical. I came here to be healed, 

and now I’ve got a jellyfish problem.
 

They appear relentless too—stinging me 

from the inside out; up & down my blood-

stream. But I wake now to the truth: IV 

infiltration. Medical error. Hot, ballooning
 

forearm & indigo bruises unfurling

like tentacles. Backward motion on a path 

to health that nobody’s ever promised. 

But still, I know there is a refuge—

some place deep inside, with light 

dimly pulsing.  Some place that hasn’t 

yet been used up. I’ve imagined when 

that day comes there might be pain so
 

deep, it may cover my eyes, and stillness

so loud, it’s still again. But that place 

isn’t here. Not next to you, doctor, who 

can’t even remember my name. It’s a
 

good name—one that means something 

to my family. So please know these frigid 

needles are nothing, and my sizzling veins 

don’t scare me. Not when there’s that spot
 

I believe in. And my neighbor over there 

with her cap of ice (whose chemo’s running

low now), I think she knows about it too. 

And we’re not going there quietly.