WEBVTT

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I was writing this book
while my uncle was very sick,

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and so I'll read the poem I
read last night out a bit.

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It's called "Hematology".

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While he lives, here's
a list of images:

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light in a filthy glass, pigeon
dead on a high spiked window,

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clear plastic bag above
him full of water,

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if water could kill everything
that lives in you and it can.

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I sit in the corner
of the cancer ward

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fingering the app that shows me
other faggots in the hospital.

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Chat with one I might meet
in radiology but don't.

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Instead make the sick man
laugh while he's conscious.

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Compliment his couture gown,
the new brutal cheekbone

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that appeared with the chemo.

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If only it were as simple as a
magnet sucking the bad metals

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out of him.

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If only I could
make a better list,

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paraphrastic, restorative.

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If only I met that stranger in
the basement and our pleasure

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rose through the hospital, bliss
poultice for the sorrow skin

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to sit half conscious
and half machinery.

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While the sick man
lives, all I can do

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is recount the vast
pastoral of his illness.

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When he is gone I'm counting
on all the good flooding back.

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His beard, a collapsed country.

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His laugh, a memory
so liquid I'll

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hear it when anyone opens a
window to scare the birds.

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