Spring 2008 Museletter

Museletter Poetry Page

Illness
Editor: Wendy Vardaman

NOT WITH ICE

The battle is not with ice.
I am not a strong-prowed icebreaker
in the Arctic or the Alaska passages
breaking it up ahead of me;
the battle is with heat, much
more than the passion of a kiss—

it is lying face down
on the basalt doorstep of hell,
Cerberus gnawing my face,
his hors d’oeuvres. it is my fingernails
sliding, shredded, over the lip
of a volcano following the lava down;

it is the beat of the heart through
veins and arteries magnified,
so loud in my ears I can’t hear
anything else, each pulse, pain,
stern teacher with a ferule in hand
hitting the desk, or the hand cracking
the whip taken from the wall
to do more than threaten
seventy times seven or even
seventy billion: to give it.

I slip into a hot sea, but the rocking
of the thick waves gives
no comfort, not even the illusion
of a female Titan’s hands under me,
no sobbing of the sea here either
to soothe my ear straining to hear,
over the heavy beating, a mother’s
song assuring me someone
is coming, someone hears.

—Peg Lauber, Eau Claire

SURGEON’S WISDOM

After the brain
surgery
I am told
“You will not
be able
to write
for a few days”
“I will” I reply
in return

Reading later
I realize
he may
have been right

“My last task
lost my lost
My my last
my last salt
and my mast
fast past past”

I am not sure
what I have
written about
And just what
was my very last
task?

—Kathleen Grieger, Menomonee Falls

BAL TRAVESTI

Stripped of meaning, melanoma delights the ear
with humming consonants, gentle vowels, lilting rhythm.
It evokes a centuries-old Italian dance,
Renaissance nobility clad in velvet pantaloons,
embroidered tunics, feathered caps.
Bejeweled contessas curtsy as
rainbow silks and satins caress delicate ankles,
whisper of hidden delights.

From afar, dance and dancers are exquisite,
scintillating grace in tempo lento.
Scrutiny reveals the scurry
of lice in elaborately coiffed, powdered hair,
the musk of unwashed flesh
blended with attar of rose.

—Judy Roy, Baileys Harbor

Theme for Spring issue:
Foreign Destinations

Deadline:
Friday, May 2, 2008

NERVE DAMAGE

Tell them that, he says,
as I give him the story of old friends
who ask in the bread aisle
what’s become of her and him.
Tell them I am nowhere, he says,
but right here where they left me,
positioning her broken neck
just so on the pillows and in reach
of the life she demands each day—
the cane, the coffee, the crisp cigarettes,
an unused bit of charcoal and paper—
feeding her morphine
a bit more often than he should
because she begs and begs,
because he needs it just as much.

The hardest part, he tells me,
is she still sleeps in our bed
up the stairs at the back of the house,
him carrying her dead weight,
his own wounds giving her up
again and again. That room
has become too small, he says,
but none of this is his to give away
so he stares all night
from a chair in the hall,
waits for the school bus to pass,
waits for the thud of news
and past due notices
before he rises, before
he carries the day back down.

—Cathy Cofell, Appleton
previously published in Fox Cry Review

IF ONLY

I steer the wretched needle
past your veins and bones,
the morphine sweetly cruising
down unmapped corridors.

I stand helpless when you sway
with your father’s cane in hand
each tap ricocheting
against my aching heart.

Outside your bedroom door,
I close my eyes
and see you well again.

Blowing me kisses,
tucking me in.

—Susan Kileen, Watertown

WINTER AFTER SURGERY

Snow holds the tree branches
in a cold lover’s embrace
unwilling to let go until the Spring thaw.
I folded my hands
and prayed to the image
of Christ on the Cross
while entombed in the hospital room.
The anesthetic led me into dreamless
sleep where all the pain was borne upon another.

I awoke to find a hole
in my side in the exact place
where the soldier had thrust his spear.
Red fluid flowed gently down
a plastic tube into a bottle
where it may be used
as a future Eucharist.
The brilliant cold sun of winter
keeps sentry over my recovery.

             —James P. Roberts, Madison
             Originally published in Spirit Fire
             (Hawk & Whippoorwill Press, 2003)

SICK DAYS

Huddled on the couch,
her cheeks are pale
beach rocks in the morning.

And red hangers fall
to the curbside below,
off-hook, piled
under a hoary oak.

There my dog limps
like he's never limped before—
kicked from poisoned salmon
flopping on the shore.

Stiff, the vet says, as scaffold boards.

Our little girl is four.

The dog licks her fevered cheeks—
the dried white linen.

She’s at 104.

Home with me.
Needing mommy.

             —Peter Whalen, Greendale