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Path in the Afternoon
Yesterday we had testicular tumors
but this afternoon we have ovarian
ones.
The red laser-dot bounces
up and down
over the specimen projected
onto the screen in the soporific
lecture hall,
back and forth
over that pink and red-pied grapefruit
that once had been an ovary,
jerking
like conjoined damselflies mating
on the wing, cutting
the currents and darting
over turgid mountain streams.
The professor presses another
button to advance
the slides of cancerous human
tissue that comprise today’s lesson.
Another grapefruit:
Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma.
The apple blossoms are bursting like
popcorn
on the supple boughs which nuzzle
the windows of my old bedroom,
where my mother has planted
tomatoes in half-pint
milk cartons on the sill.
Peritoneal carcinomatosis,
the professor reads aloud
the daffodil-yellow
letters which float
above an eviscerated middle
aged woman, her open
abdominal cavity speckled
with tumors like
gravel among the red mud
of a Colorado creek-bed.
Last night the hardware store reeked
of lawn
fertilizer, citronella and loam. And in
fifteen
minutes the plaid-skirted school girls
with ash-smudged foreheads will flit
giggling across the parking lot.
But this afternoon we have ovarian
tumors
and tomorrow, gastrointestinal ones.
James S. Wilk, MD
Dr. Wilk (AΩA, University of Colorado,
1992) is in private solo practice in Internal
Medicine at Rose Medical Center in Denver,
Colorado. His poetry has appeared in The
Panhandler Quarterly and Measure. His
address is: 4545 E. 9th Avenue #330, Denver,
Colorado 80220. E-mail: wjs30@qwest.net.
The Pharos/Winter 2008 15