The Morgue Supervisor
wants us to line up
the bodies
from the MCI
in alphabetical order
but the idiot
doesn’t realize
that as of now
half of the corpses
are named
John
or Jane
Doe
so my partner
to be a smartass--
he wants to
get fired--
puts all the John Does
in one pile,
all the Jane Does
in another pile
and he says that
I’m in charge
of the people with names.
He tries to stack the bodies
one on top of the other
when I go over
and say
Would you like your body
treated like that?
and he says
I’d be dead,
I wouldn’t care.
But your family would,
I say
and he starts to say something
but I tell him
that if he doesn’t
start putting the bodies
in some kind of respectful order
I’m going to kill him
myself.
And he walks away,
to his every fifteen-minute
smoke break
and I sit on the ground
and look at all this
lividity,
the rainbow of bruising,
the gravity
of death
and I take off my PPE,
snapping my glove off
and look at the palm of my hand,
flipping it back and forth,
amazed
I can move it
while the smell
tries to pull
me away
from this moment.
The Love Poem
is hated.
It sits there
wanting you
to enjoy
its lips
and its hair,
but you only see
target,
the brandishing
of a weapon,
so it pouts,
tries to seduce
you
with rhyme,
but each syllable
feels false,
the plastic surgery
of couplets,
as if its cheeks
were goldfish,
the sleepy
sinking
feeling of suicide.
You walk away.
It is there,
alone,
unread,
screaming,
its shout
echoing
deep
into your
holster.
My Third Hour of Waiting at the V.A. Hospital
I’m so hungry I could eat an entire kettle full of homemakers.
The Senators only see photo op, not the alcoholic snowmen
for all their desecrations of skin. I want to put a tourniquet
on his room, after I leave, keeping the dreamers trapped within
their dream and me, a lesson in happiness, driving straight
for the woods, deep into the ecstasy of being off the grid,
but I can’t walk. Not now. So I wait. Drink coffee. Think
about birch. While the advertisements of Coke are pounded
into my head. Three hundred and fifty-two. The youngest,
angriest nurse in the world walks by. Three hundred fifty-two!
wants us to line up
the bodies
from the MCI
in alphabetical order
but the idiot
doesn’t realize
that as of now
half of the corpses
are named
John
or Jane
Doe
so my partner
to be a smartass--
he wants to
get fired--
puts all the John Does
in one pile,
all the Jane Does
in another pile
and he says that
I’m in charge
of the people with names.
He tries to stack the bodies
one on top of the other
when I go over
and say
Would you like your body
treated like that?
and he says
I’d be dead,
I wouldn’t care.
But your family would,
I say
and he starts to say something
but I tell him
that if he doesn’t
start putting the bodies
in some kind of respectful order
I’m going to kill him
myself.
And he walks away,
to his every fifteen-minute
smoke break
and I sit on the ground
and look at all this
lividity,
the rainbow of bruising,
the gravity
of death
and I take off my PPE,
snapping my glove off
and look at the palm of my hand,
flipping it back and forth,
amazed
I can move it
while the smell
tries to pull
me away
from this moment.
The Love Poem
is hated.
It sits there
wanting you
to enjoy
its lips
and its hair,
but you only see
target,
the brandishing
of a weapon,
so it pouts,
tries to seduce
you
with rhyme,
but each syllable
feels false,
the plastic surgery
of couplets,
as if its cheeks
were goldfish,
the sleepy
sinking
feeling of suicide.
You walk away.
It is there,
alone,
unread,
screaming,
its shout
echoing
deep
into your
holster.
My Third Hour of Waiting at the V.A. Hospital
I’m so hungry I could eat an entire kettle full of homemakers.
The Senators only see photo op, not the alcoholic snowmen
for all their desecrations of skin. I want to put a tourniquet
on his room, after I leave, keeping the dreamers trapped within
their dream and me, a lesson in happiness, driving straight
for the woods, deep into the ecstasy of being off the grid,
but I can’t walk. Not now. So I wait. Drink coffee. Think
about birch. While the advertisements of Coke are pounded
into my head. Three hundred and fifty-two. The youngest,
angriest nurse in the world walks by. Three hundred fifty-two!