Sore Throat

Atop rough exam-room paper,
The patient waits, cold and cross-legged
And in walks the fat black bird
Full of worms, yet greedily plucking
Lice from dusty, folding-fan wings.
He chitters: sated little sounds -
More unnerving than relaxing
To his subject, whose face he prods
With a tongue depressor bound 
By three dirty, jointed toes.
Within the mouth, the incarcerated tongue recoils.
A pointed claw caresses the cracked lips;
The plump brown lice fall on sanitary linoleum,
And the patient is gagging under fluorescent lights
In the care of a macabre doctor
Who is shooting fatherly looks with jaundiced eyes
While warbling weary wisdom
From the tip of a crooked, snack-crusted beak.
The patient wonders that he paid for this
As he catches some spittle in the eye. 

ROT

I am your mother.
I am impermeable -
I thought; I feel
Sickening longing
In my thin middle.
Nausea penetrates
These parts made for pain.
Perhaps I am not
Impenetrable either;
A rock for my children
(For myself).
People tell me,
"See a doctor.
Everything is alright."
Drugs: Alprazolam, clonazepam.
Something, anything
Substantive, subtle, satiny,
To rest my rolling thoughts.
To get me through
Empty days which pass
away like you have.
My child, chance,
A happenstance event
Wrecked this fragile heart,
Which at my age beats
Brothy blood through tired,
Spidery veins.
Can a dotor bring me peace?
Bring you back
From that dark casket,
Happily?
Reverberations of your voice
Quell the horribly still
(Violently churning)
Stomach in me.
You are not a wisp of smoke.
I could not have known
You'd be blown
Into inexistence by one shallow,
Seeping breath.
You are a permanent fixture.
Exuse me,
Were.

Lisa Waldon