Two Poems

Comorbid

Among the living & the dying,
IV bags filled with blood
or chemo meds, air disinfected, floor

& walls antiseptic & machines
humming. The narrative
less important than

the documentation, lost
on a crashed hard drive,
red marker circles around

all the puncture wounds in my
forearms from blood
tests & MRI contrast injected

while my body lay prone
on a plastic slab. My nose is
broken but cannot be

fixed, smashed more so
than broken, the cartilage bleeding
out & staining pavement

after an accidental childhood
collision. The documentation
my grandpa when he still shaved

every day, my dad still so young
at middle age, me in my First
Communion blazer & clip-on

tie, recently broken nose
swollen too big for my face—
an approximately centered

scar—, a gravel indent
in my knee & chicken pox mounds
& a box cutter slit & a surgeon’s

incision behind my ear & bleeding
time tests failed, a nurse
wiping away my blood

while my skin turned
blue. Scars also exist
along my spinal cord &

on my brain. If a vein
cannot be found, why I am
blamed for my hairy arms

or for being dehydrated or
anxious? Later my blood
seeps out filling the IV tube

& I ask that back into
my system it be flushed.

Frankenstein’s Monster

If trapped in the body
one must organize
each day according to

the needs of the body.
If trapped one must listen
to the body, every morning

& throughout everyday
taking stock, checking
the inventory of capabilities &

sensations. Will power
useless, one is helpless
in the face of this

state of being, the body
thoughtlessly seeking
to alleviate its cravings

& necessities. Time
elapsed between meals
& extended sleeps

& visits to the washroom,
time occupying a washroom,
distance to the nearest washroom,

distance between one individual
& another, the other
othering the other’s damaged

body, unable to empathize with
the limitations, the limitless
restrictions & demands

imposed by a condition that
to the privileged is
an abstraction, distance

between locations, even
the space between
a vehicle & an enclosure

or a mountain range
overlooked from a precipice.

________

Timothy Cook, an Edgewater Chicago native, graduated from Loyola University with a BA in philosophy and from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared in some places, and he is a recipient of a grant from the Mookie Jam Foundation, which supported artists living with multiple sclerosis.