Post-Barium
(originally published in Boston Review)
Last week they lit your insides up
by sci-fi periscope: and your insides, up
on the doctor's screen, blazed like a colonist's map
of the Congo: wherever the empire had set up shop
down the rich green river-stink
were trading posts of pink
or outposts of rot
inverted pink that couldn't be got
at easily, by knife, nor chemo shrink.
Tonight you're passed out cold
on the couch – valerian cut into dope. We're old
acquaintances; I'm keeping watch, take my occasional leave
for a smoke on your iced balcony. We've
been through this before: first Curtis, one blasted
summer, going fast; then Farmer, who lasted
longer. I've managed to wind up clean – breathed
dead hippo meat so to speak and not be contaminated –
that last bit lifted directly from Joseph Conrad.
