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The Zipper
by William F Dougherty
[from the Crab Sonnets]
They sank a silver zipper in my chest:
a foot of snag-toothed staples used to chain
the cavity where cancer bloomed its yeast.
The lovely morphine drips: I don’t complain;
I feel aloof. The nurses glide like ghosts,
their chat like crinkled cellophane; I sway
upon an inner stalk each time I’m dosed.
The lights stay on to keep it day all day.
A voice in surplice hints I’m deeply hurt,
provisional, as rumored in my blood.
My tongue feels bronzed; I try but fail to blurt
against demeaning signs of likelihood--
a gullet’s a hard barter for a cure.
I’ll bite down hard, disjunctively endure.
08/23/2012 Posted on 08/23/2012
Copyright © 2024 William F Dougherty
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by George Hoerner on 08/24/12 at 08:34 PM Very well done William. I carry a zipper down my chest for a quad bypass. This is a very nice write on a subject most of us would prefer to not consider. But then most of us hide from tough reality. |
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