The Fire Landscape: Poems

Such Places

Such Places When my mother talked about sickness, She named the foreign diseases We would not get: Elephantiasis, Yellow fever, cholera, yaws. “Such places,” she said, and I have never Traveled to one of those countries where The world’s worst maladies begin. I’ve never entered a jungle where Men bleed from their pores or women swell Into monstrous clouds. I’ve stayed at home And seen no one die but four students At Kent State by means other than disease. When I talk about sickness, I mention My mother and her sister and the rest Of my family who slipped silently To death. I mean their shattered hearts Or the sudden lightning of massive stroke. My wife adds hidden tumors, how we’ve named The three for which we’ve been tested— CAT scans, bone scans, both our wired bodies Walking the treadmill for the EKG After we listened so passively To our pleasant doctors, we suffered The pursed lips of the terminal. Still negative, we think of the worst Diseases we’ve really had, pneumonia And rheumatic fever, guessing Our odds in the outback, but when 99 P 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 99 Our son finally speaks, he describes AIDS at the health club where he works, The lesioned intruder he asked to leave. Because he was naked, our son says, Because he was drunk and broke the rules, Almost as skinny as the anorexic Who did sit ups in the sauna, Weighing herself six times per hour. So many ways our bodies can be Entered, so many exotic names: Ebola, Lassa, Marburg, Machupo— They sound like a roster of devils. No, They sound like the angels of anxiety Who manifest themselves to the healthy. p100 1FINCKE_pages.qxd 5/21/08 9:31 AM Page 100 ...