I was writing this book while my uncle was very sick,
and so I'll read the poem I read last night out a bit.
It's called "Hematology".
While he lives, here's a list of images:
light in a filthy glass, pigeon dead on a high spiked window,
clear plastic bag above him full of water,
if water could kill everything that lives in you and it can.
I sit in the corner of the cancer ward
fingering the app that shows me other faggots in the hospital.
Chat with one I might meet in radiology but don't.
Instead make the sick man laugh while he's conscious.
Compliment his couture gown, the new brutal cheekbone
that appeared with the chemo.
If only it were as simple as a magnet sucking the bad metals
out of him.
If only I could make a better list,
paraphrastic, restorative.
If only I met that stranger in the basement and our pleasure
rose through the hospital, bliss poultice for the sorrow skin
to sit half conscious and half machinery.
While the sick man lives, all I can do
is recount the vast pastoral of his illness.
When he is gone I'm counting on all the good flooding back.
His beard, a collapsed country.
His laugh, a memory so liquid I'll
hear it when anyone opens a window to scare the birds.