Ending up in Hospital Room 403B
~anonymous

My face boasts an idiot’s leer.
My thoughts,
lucid as flame,
broken as speech, tangled in misfiring paths.
These limbs
once strong bearers of…
Now like trunks and vines,
both fallen.

A wish to lie under stars,
but enrapped in six sides of plaster.
Faces come and surely go.
None important
None worth the exertion
of smile.
Except the little boy
who stopped to stare.
A memory incarnate
worth the water and salt
escaping these wisdom worn eyes

straining to feed my head
with the incoherent news from the window
yet slipping ever so subtly into
an exhaustion so profound
even light gives up sometimes.

*

a small victory
~c.m. mclamb

It is three weeks
after being told of
his newly risen counts,
two weeks
after my official
undetectable diagnosis,
and the first time
we’ve returned to making
truly passionate love.

We are once again
full of each other
as we lay down to rest,
coiled around curves,
nestled into folds,
fingers entwined,
caramel skin pressed
against soft, wooly hair;
safe for the moment
from the fire fighting
to spawn within.

*

LEFT INFERIOR FRONTAL GYRUS
~Art Stewart

Today my left inferior frontal gyrus went wild choosing
one word over another, again and again –

ant in amber over bug in sap: note
the color of the ant is black as anthracite; the ant

is suspended
in buckwheat honey solid while a bug

could be anything, a blob, not clear
as a nine-spot ladybird beetle immobilized

just so in a gold drop
of resin on a leaky branch of the peach tree

out back, decrepit with age, but in spring
oh yes, in spring, the tree comes alive

again, choosing
to push forth

delicate leaves, pure petals.

With credit for this poem to Circle, Turtle, Ashes.