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  • Hand Work
  • Alissa Valles (bio)

Surgery: n [M surgerie, fr. MF cirurgie, fr. L chirurgia, fr. Gk cheirourgia, fr. cheirourgos, surgeon, fr. cheir hand + ergon work]

Diagnosis

Probed & pricked, then redactedby crossings-outto a list of symptoms;a moss specimen riddled with aphids. There's a hole in you I can see through.

Some curdle, some cry, some freeze,some plant a fresh green secret.Some go running in their working clothesdown a canyon in an icy breeze.

Some sit up into the witching hourswatching the movie of their livesflicker & fade, or call ignoredcousins to ask how uncles died.

Some join a group or leave a church,some start a blog, or smash a mirror. Of all the people. Curse their genes. The doctors. The discerning needle. [End Page 551]

Decision Tree

More root than branch, each choicea finger sunk into darker soil,the mole-blind groping pathwaysslowly uprooting all that's real.

The chill of knives or burning rays,hormonal or chemical ablutions;burst to sink node, chance to end& all the countless permutations.

The curve & coefficient of risk,utility function & influence:anemic tendrils push againstthe porous world of fact & sense.

Possibles, probables, freaks of fate,one in a thousand, one ninety-ninth;your options run from left to right, your fear has the run of a labyrinth. [End Page 552]

Surgical Finds

Drill holes in a Neolithicskull. A drained Egyptian molar.Asklepios's soporificherbs inducing healing slumber.

Sushruta's Ayurvedic epic:a hundred twenty instrumentscatalogued (instead of ships),& guidance in experiments:

practice incisions on vegetables, & scraping on raw animal hide; try puncturing on lotus stalks, probing on moth-infested wood.

The texts, fetched up in Cordoba,were translated into Arabic;Abu al-Qasim ordered them & bound them with a catgut stitch. [End Page 553]

Support Group

Every week we come, somewith wives or partners, some alone,all with a shaken manhood in tow,foreshortened, vague, like a ghost

of power once exercised to the full, the smudge in Holbein's Ambassadors which, seen suddenly from a cornerof your eye reveals itself as skull.

Who are we if, seedless, futureless,our reduced selves dig in their heels,accepting editorial cuts & suturesin the arc of fate, the weft of flesh,

the smooth underbelly of Eros?To this question & a few queries,more incidental, about insurance, we apply ourselves most Tuesdays. [End Page 554]

Waiting Room

"Zoya Shepitko?" "You don't eat.""Birthday?" "A little better though.""Five Ten Twenty." "Not so great.""Scheduled at 8?" "Nurse said no."

"Mary, that you?" "Four-leaf clover.""Coffee's what they call this stuff?""I sure look like death warmed over.""Do I leave my cup here?" "Tough."

"Jesus Quinones?" "He's on Floor 2.""If I'm out by noon, I'll give a bark.""There are other people waiting too.""I couldn't find a switch in the dark."

"You don't have to like your doctor.""Birthday?" "Twelve Six Forty-one.""It would just be nice to understand what she says to me when I'm done." [End Page 555]

Pre-Surgical Poem

In a blank, curtained cubicleI stuff your coat, shoes & cap& all winter's leaden articlesinto a prelabeled hanger bag.

One leaves all things behind:teeth or wig, cross or beads,prosthetic limb or hearing aid,cash, cards & clutch of keys.

Now dispossessed, unmanned,fragile in a lightweight gown,follow two sterile souls downa passage to the room beyond.

Doors, swaying, wave me back,a traitor for surrendering loveto a curt nod & latex gloves, to the cold eye above the mask. [End Page 556]

Left-Handed Surgeon

In the womb, I held my left hand closeto my face, they say, like a toy or a gun,absorbing the cloudy memory it holdsof a vanishing twin, left side of the sun.

At school they tied it behind my back(some saint had said it was natural evil).Assigning me lines for my copybook,they jeered at me if I broke the pencil.

When I started training as a surgeonI had a set of instruments orderedfrom a...

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