Pearly Whites
We lined the boys against the wall – this one’s got balls,
he got moxie.
Cappuccino hand – cell phone wrist.
That grin, lord almighty we know that grin.
Ignore his suit pants.
Ignore everything past his
Pearly Whites.
Love me no wrong – love me
virility and polished shoes
old age grows – a mansion.
Captivated by the interior. Felt up by dollar bills
By strippers
By aides
By girls walking home from school.
No worries, no worries.
Raptured on earth
Raptured now
Raptured around
Heathens poor
Food stamps numbered on budgets.
Ignore everything
past his Pearly Whites — we lined the boys against the wall
this one’s got moxie
He goes first.
Waiting for a Funeral
Frank bellows – inaudible.
The doctor: yes, a broken hip.
Left shoulder dislocated.
How has his diet been?
Is there a doctor we can speak to?
Medical history?
Should we use soft restraints?
Did you let him urinate
into paper towels
and then set them aside?
“He likes catfish nuggets,” Frank’s wife
expected that
And only that
to satisfy every question.
The ER liaison stepped out
into the lobby
periodically.
Hispanic and young, a gut
starting under his button-down collared shirt;
green with white stripes.
The obese in the waiting room knew he was gay.
The skinny – who had brought the obese – also knew and they stared.
“At Saint Mary’s,
like all other hospitals,
the emergency room sees patients
based on seriousness of your problem,”
a slight lisp.
Spoke over “SportsCenter”
overworked lungs hungry for air through the fat.
An African-American woman raised her hand,
her body squeezed into a lobby chair.
The ER liaison walked over.
She pointed to her husband,
asleep in a hospital wheelchair.
The ER Liaison was in charge of coffee and tea;
you had to ask for it.
He never allowed the obese to have any.
Frank ripped his IV lines
tried to stand.
The nurse was sick of him
later described him on charts as dementia.
The doctors pumped him full
morphine;
the nurse retreated
the loading dock for a cigarette.
Frank went limp and snored
through his toothless mouth.
A new doctor
Black, young and tall with thin-rimmed glasses.
X-rays.
Indeed a broken hip.
The wife had left for supper.
A dislocated shoulder.
Lab results. Diabetes and blood poisoned – inconclusive.
Morphine dreams
of being home with the blind dog he screamed,
guttural noises – toothless.
The comfort of cat urine ammonia and dust floated rooms,
side-stepping antique soda cans and picture frames.
He loved that dog: that blind dog that shot out from under his legs
for a squirrel and caused his fall.
Loved that house even when “the blacks” started “ruining [inaudible].”
If he had the energy he would continue to hoard.
“Why are we in New York?” Frank asked the nurse who had grown to understand him.
“We are not in New York, we are in Illinois,” replied the young black woman.
He tried to stand and she pressed a button. Frank went limp.
“The soybeans, Pa needs me out there with the soybeans.”
“We are not in Alabama,” the nurse said, “we are in Illinois.”
Frank swallowed hard and tried to focus through milky fog.
“Okay.”
“Now you stay where you’re at, you hear me?”
Frank looked around the room as he tried
to move his limbs past the soft restraints
around his wrists and ankles. Milky fog.
“Okay,” he said to her in a soft moan.
“We’ll have you patched up in no time Mr. Frank.”
Frank looked away and toward the window,
the sun shown brightly and he could tell.
“Baseball today?”
The nurse took the television remote and flipped through
several channels. She placed the remote in his hand
and moved his index finger onto the volume buttons.
“This is volume up,” she slid his finger down, “and this is volume down.”
She left the room as Frank let his head sink into the pillow. The Cubs were down by two in the eighth.