The box has been delivered and set
upon the dining room table.
You read the label, shake it, and listen.
This is the visiting nurse’s equipment.
Even though you know what lurks inside,
you can’t help being excited by a parcel.
A few weeks ago, you prowled
the Health aisle at Barnes and Noble,
to see if Blood in Stool was indexed,
in The Handbook of Signs and Symptoms.
Before all this, you were a science teacher
who liked to make collages: beads, paper,
seeds, rusted bolts, bird bones, Dali ants.
Now your butt is everyone’s concern.
You no longer sit home scheming
about how to make Mendel’s peas
fascinating to teens. Instead,
you spend all day focused on patterns
in dust, marble, tree bark. Everything
is such a 3-D miracle of life,
you tire of your X-ray vision.
Nurse Cherry arranges the box contents
like a Thanksgiving hostess:
biohazard disposal jug where the turkey goes,
flanked by a biohazard clean up kit,
a 9-volt battery pack as a salad plate;
some latex gloves, alcohol preps, syringes,
heparin and saline, for condiments.
Instead of a hand in dinner prayer,
your balletic gesture offers a bare wrist.
She hooks you up. Amazing what one
can adjust to. The chemo should be the blue
of anti-freeze, but it’s clear. Possible side effects:
nausea, vomiting, fatigue, hair loss, mouth sores,
rashes, blisters, swollen fingers and toes,
blood in urine, blood in stool, and leukemia.
You don’t trust a cure that could cause leukemia,
but the side effects that bother you
aren’t listed anywhere. Why do your eyes
feel smaller and your body smell like tin?
How have you absorbed the aroma of hospitals,
laboratories, waiting rooms?
Thank god for television—but Diane
announces Katie Couric’s husband
has died of colon cancer. You begin
frantic calculations: he was 42, you are 38,
plus 4. You have GHI, he was famous,
minus 3. His was stage 4, yours stage 2,
plus 6. He had his surgery 8 months ago.
You promise to eat right, quit drinking,
quit cursing, go to church, exercise, volunteer.
You turn on America’s Funniest Home Videos
because the kid with the bat will hit his dad in the nuts,
the table under the drunk dancer will collapse,
the dog on the skateboard will crash,
and it’s good to know what’s coming.