Night Nurse
By Andre Bagoo
I.
First one stitch then two
rising through keloid flesh like dreams.
My body knows before I do.
My scar yields things to you,
a fine blue thread, left behind by the nurse
who smiles, who sees
how well my wound heals.
He says, ‘Soon you will be free.’
Time is flesh: all we were, all we are,
all we will be. The body, it knows.
The future writes our dreams.
II.
time passes and
all I have is the poem
III.
Floors yellow, walls yellow, doctors
In photographs with successful teeth
Mudslides on the news, the television
In the corner is the constant witness
Words here bend into medical tests
What disease? How many kidneys?
Meteors crash onto green chairs
Families crater then settle into
Waiting (time) waiting (service)
Weighing the options: live or die?
A soul or no soul? Maybe the soul
Is like the line of a poem depending
On what’s before, what’s coming,
Then going somewhere else. Stories.
Exit is the clearest sign. The magazine
Rack has not been touched in years.
A scrawl on the wall asks of its origin
Perhaps a child left it behind. A child
Who was waiting to find out if
Mother died, his cousins shivering
Under blankets. The room before love.
