WEBVTT

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Seems like as good a
time as any to redo

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a couple of cancer-related
poems, so I will do that now.

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It is a strange thing to be,
as many of you, no doubt,

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no, a kind of--

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to have a front row seat to
the decline of a loved person.

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So it has produced
a couple of poems

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that I might not have
expected that I would write.

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One of them is called--

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it's this one, it's
called "Foley Catheter."

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I clean its latex
length three times a day

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with kindliest touch,
swipe an alcohol,

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swatch from the tender
skin at the tip of him down

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the lumen to the drainage bag,
I change each day and flush

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with vinegar.

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When I vowed for
worse, unwitting

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did I wed this something
other than a husband, jumble

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of exposed plumbing
and euphemism.

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Fumble I through my
nurse's functions

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upended from the spare bed
by his every midnight sound.

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Unsought inside our
grand romantic intimacy,

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another intimacy opens,
ruthless and indecent,

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consuming all our hidden most.

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In a body, immodest such
hunger, we sometimes call tumor.

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In a marriage, it's cherish,
from the Latin for cost.

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