The Fire Landscape: Poems

The Fluoroscope Era

The Fluoroscope Era While I counted the limpers and hobblers, The crutches, the canes, and the chairs on wheels, My mother said the future was inside My shoes, that I could be fitted by light. My mother, who believed white shirts and ties Were earned, trusted my walk to the wisdom Of the carefully dressed, the dark-suited Like Mr. Eck, who brushed the fluoroscope While he studied the bright bones of my feet. “What you have isn’t cancer,” he murmured; “It’s not the beginning of World War III,” And I blinked like a doll, remembering How boys, when the bomb fell in my comics, Were skeletons and then nothing at all, The sky over the earth turning as green As the heavens on another planet Or my feet inside new, corrective shoes. The fluoroscope was the future, its time Marked on Mr. Eck’s radium watch, wound And running accurately in the dark, Flooding my feet in the green broth of size To come if the Russians didn’t destroy The brilliance of my body. I squinted And stared to the bone, reminding myself p18 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 18 That anybody could be alien, Slew-footed by the chance of birth, dancing The secret ballet of the built-up arch Until the well-dressed declared you perfect. 19 P 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 19 ...