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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3263 Registered: 11-1998 |
Poem of the Week AB Negative Graeme Mullen The prick of the needle is electric, not like a pinch not like she said it’d be. The dizzy feeling hits and white walls blur; the nurse’s conversation stops making sense. I start to wonder what other destinations my blood has found. Mosquitoes have sucked their share, mostly in the humid nights of my childhood. Sidewalks have been well-slicked, from falls and scrapes, and the one along Riverside must still be scabbed along the edge, from the summer we lived there, when the glass from your dollar-store vase smashed against my calf. The scar along my eyebrow, the one I’ve made up hundreds of excuses for, bled buckets the night I got drunk in Oxford, and stumbled unromantically into a wall. All that blood, dried up now, dead— Perhaps this batch will last longer. The nurse draws the needle out, plugs the tiny hole with gauze. How many mosquito lifetimes do they store it for, and are there spaces beyond this plastic I.V. bag where mine is still alive? This is my first deposit into the nation’s blood banks, but then of course, there’s the first time we kissed to consider. I’d been gnawing my cheek all night, and when we finally pressed our lips together, you said there was a copper taste. Surely then, a drop or two must have traveled down your throat, settled in some small cavern inside you. I’d like to think that’s true. I pinch my eyes shut, imagine the hum of your organs warming that secret pool, and smile at knowing that as long as your veins keep their flow you’ll never get rid of me, not completely. |
