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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3394 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Transfusion Christopher T. George To Barbara I. Intaglio A fire inside the stone, an image engraved in a dark gem. You're an ICU nurse; on your arm, you wear a pik, a plastic lizard. We meet in the lobby of the Sheraton, my Kentucky woman in black, in dark glasses, in Bethesda to receive your cancer treatment. You've climbed Kilimanjaro twice, shot your own zebra (its hide hangs on your wall), cared for Rwandan war victims. You tell me how you broke protocol to whisper to the dying woman whose family had been herded from the room, to tell her God loved her. You tell me about your trip to India and Nepal, the Kenyan white girl. II. India You bathe the four-year-old boy with scabies in the city they call "The Armpit of India," his head an open sore of green pus, a battlefield for the microscopic mite. Scabies everywhere on the orphans: buttocks, fingers, ears, legs. The feast of Dasain, everything closed, even the pharmacy, so you and Mary Ellen rummage for cotton bales, an antipyuretic for their fevers, calamine lotion for their itching. You drag the infected mattresses from the orphanage, set them on fire. Sparks drift like spirits to the stars. III. Transfusion I can't stop the tumor growing in your lung and neither can the new chemo the Feds tried. I'm grateful that instead of flying home, you stay to attend my lecture. They've removed the pik from your arm; you rejoice at the prospect of a shower, your first since February. Now, next morning, I slosh through still-dark Baltimore as you get ready to take your flight back to Kentucky. As I think about you, I almost miss my turn at Poe's grave to head to Washington, the line of rear lights ahead, red corpuscles flowing into the nation's body politic. |
