LETHARGY. RESULTING FROM THE SUDDEN EXTINCTION OF LIGHT

LETHARGY. RESULTING FROM THE SUDDEN EXTINCTION OF LIGHT

LETHARGY. RESULTING FROM THE SUDDEN EXTINCTION OF LIGHT

The nurse looks away from the patient
whose back is arced in a swoon,
a skin-and-bone parabola.
 
She rolls her eyes to their corners
as if to say: I’m fed up with this
light-dark, fall-catch charade,
 
I’m sick of bracing my knees
in wait for the sudden drop
of their weight, I’m sick
 
of the smell of their black-outs,
sweat on serge or wool, sour
as ammonia. Their impromptu
 
urine, warmly worming down
my own skirt and over my shoes.
And I don’t believe them anyhow.
 
Her hands are clasped against the patient’s
ribs, thick washer-woman’s fingers,
latticed like skin-and-bone basketwork.
 
She does not understand his modus
operandi, and why these women
faint away when the light is quenched
 
like a match disappeared into
a mouth. She lets their heads
loll back, inept new mother.
 
She holds her pose, a tedious pietà,
in the dark. She hears the glass of photo
plates slide like swords into a magician’s box.