Portrait of the Illness as Nightmare

No matter how many times you ring the bell in the bad dark,no one will let you in. You face the fun

house with its mirrors on the outsideso everyone can see. And everyone looks. You are in your underwear

and the room is cold. The doctor's stethoscope pressed to youbecomes suddenly a snake. Your heart hisses in its cage. Your heart sputters,

a doused flame. You are drowning in your blue paper gown, which recedesin the back like an ocean, your skin a bank of hot sand.

The horizon bleeds and the days and youwander lost in a city of scalpels where everything glitters

and pills fade like moons on your tongue. You sidle throughsterile labyrinths and piss in a cup. You wait in a room like a chapel

or the belly of a beast. Either way, you thinksomething will save you, you believe this the whole fearsome time.

Your god comes and he is ordinary and terrible. He conferswith the doctors at your kitchen table and tells you to eat

your clots, round as peas. You want dessert. You want todeceive him, but he, like you, has eyes, and uses them.

You are grounded, in the ground. The pit is a tuband you are washing in your body's black water. You rise

like a fever. You writhe on a bed on a stage, the strings reachingtoward heaven. There is a momentary break for everyone

else: intermission. They chatter in the lobby. You babblesymptoms in a white confessional. You fall from a great height and land

on a gurney. You are at the front of a classroom and you are strippedto your bones. The doctor points to your pelvis. You model

the tumors—in this light they look pretty, like jewels.