POEM  OF  THE  WEEK

Nephritic Sonnet

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I wear an oxygen moustache, hating the cold

creep of air into my lungs, but the nurse says

I must keep breathing. I watch the slow clock

of blood through the IV tube, my insides out,

on display , my 'fluid being', my 'wine of life' -

but why would I try to make a poem of this?

I'm nothing more than a few sheets clipped

to a board, my bodily functions monitored

in words that doctors register above my head.

There's no poetry in the hospital gown, worn

thin from the rub of skin, or the urine stench

or how a person dies, without elegy or dirge,

on the other side, just a curtain between us

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By Tamar Yoseloff, from The Black Place

published by Seren

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