Little Pharma as Lady Macbeth
Everything turned out to be true
the ward rooms had thick wooden doors
and sealed picture windows
given a room with one man screaming
you could throw medicine and close the door
given a room of two men
one screaming
you kept the door open
for sake of the quiet one
the doors were like children’s scabs
needing to be coaxed along
in the pharmacy of the child
one used a hopscotch stone
a jacket zipper one’s tongue
the sharper tongue of a friend
anything to get one’s soft skin back
the doors were like the lost world
of loose teeth
of which there seemed to be hundreds per mouth
needing special prayers offerings of ribbons
and hot caramels
barely singed meats whatever
would lure them
trading pain for money
through the door you could shuttle
white pink slate pills
vials of lidocaine
applied by needle
patches of fentanyl
their rate-limiting membrane
like the flower called four o’clocks
flickering between trumpet and fist
blue gray ochre pills
for our guests
it was our success
to offer so much variety
and yet consistency
as bathed the old courts and hotels
ichor of silver polish and mineral oil
forms of silence opening
porches of cadenza
patio fermatas
one could teach well-born children
how to attack the phrase
the guests already know
Little Pharma Sees Ghosts
The ghosts crackle they are breaking in
Being seasoned
Like leather or iron
Their new task
Minding her
A fussy tremor like a moth sac
The white was just outside her
The breathing-in cupped wool on her tongue
Who trains them
They are so close even now
And when they are more supple …
If she had ordered blood at six and again at nine
If she had felt for a liver when the eyes rolled back
Minding her
Fussing and pointing like the mothers of foreigners
Their dishes are monstrous and alkaline
If she had seized the pupils of the eyes
Measured their mismatch
Cold dime and colder nickel
Who breeds them
They are not real and they are even closer
They are even they are untippable correct
If she had accounted
unusual weights conversions blood types telemetry hypsometry
cadastration straw polls questionnaires
As they season to leather and iron
They begin to smell
Closing her eyes only brings them out
As is said of the blind and music
As is said of the blind and the dullest items
When will the carpet dry is the stove on
They are supple the size of seals rolling
Who fattens them
Who stepped outside with them
Their white breathing is wooling her
She must be kept dry or she will shrink
She crackles with lanolin
All of the mouths not hers
Trilling together tip on tip
Close and correct as a leather-brown nest
The Tower
Into the reflective tower I came then
Although I had no mandate and my stethoscope at home
Holding the sharded road noise through its neck
I was given
A box of toys for doctors
A gavel to dismiss a knee
A light that brought out blood behind the human lens
A funnel for ears, every size compatible with the hunt
A list of every kind of fire, each paired to a telephone
Linens ruled the backstairs
Long coats, overshoe slippers
Sheets fashioned after whales
A weepable top-eye
Like the extinct rorquals and those living
Each holed linen paired with burstable ampules
Bleach and spirits
To rub through the eye to
The skin
Like church art not one thing had a meaningful back
This was not church my friends were not absent I was still
In sin possibly late and it was a tower after all
A wreath on the table chewing itself softly
Like a dog on its own tail
Bells were pulled for almost nothing, just counting
Unlike year or season, the week is not real in sky terms
In the tower the best medicines
In two bags like twins
Brought together, are strong on the spot
One does not believe in them
One rather steps abreast of their system
And observes outcomes from
The oily and marine ones, the powders, gases
One does not depart
The tower is too awake
And discloses new extensions off
Its telescope spine
The color of dried yogurt
One stays then and the world
Walks out as though at large
Everything turned out to be true
the ward rooms had thick wooden doors
and sealed picture windows
given a room with one man screaming
you could throw medicine and close the door
given a room of two men
one screaming
you kept the door open
for sake of the quiet one
the doors were like children’s scabs
needing to be coaxed along
in the pharmacy of the child
one used a hopscotch stone
a jacket zipper one’s tongue
the sharper tongue of a friend
anything to get one’s soft skin back
the doors were like the lost world
of loose teeth
of which there seemed to be hundreds per mouth
needing special prayers offerings of ribbons
and hot caramels
barely singed meats whatever
would lure them
trading pain for money
through the door you could shuttle
white pink slate pills
vials of lidocaine
applied by needle
patches of fentanyl
their rate-limiting membrane
like the flower called four o’clocks
flickering between trumpet and fist
blue gray ochre pills
for our guests
it was our success
to offer so much variety
and yet consistency
as bathed the old courts and hotels
ichor of silver polish and mineral oil
forms of silence opening
porches of cadenza
patio fermatas
one could teach well-born children
how to attack the phrase
the guests already know
Little Pharma Sees Ghosts
The ghosts crackle they are breaking in
Being seasoned
Like leather or iron
Their new task
Minding her
A fussy tremor like a moth sac
The white was just outside her
The breathing-in cupped wool on her tongue
Who trains them
They are so close even now
And when they are more supple …
If she had ordered blood at six and again at nine
If she had felt for a liver when the eyes rolled back
Minding her
Fussing and pointing like the mothers of foreigners
Their dishes are monstrous and alkaline
If she had seized the pupils of the eyes
Measured their mismatch
Cold dime and colder nickel
Who breeds them
They are not real and they are even closer
They are even they are untippable correct
If she had accounted
unusual weights conversions blood types telemetry hypsometry
cadastration straw polls questionnaires
As they season to leather and iron
They begin to smell
Closing her eyes only brings them out
As is said of the blind and music
As is said of the blind and the dullest items
When will the carpet dry is the stove on
They are supple the size of seals rolling
Who fattens them
Who stepped outside with them
Their white breathing is wooling her
She must be kept dry or she will shrink
She crackles with lanolin
All of the mouths not hers
Trilling together tip on tip
Close and correct as a leather-brown nest
The Tower
Into the reflective tower I came then
Although I had no mandate and my stethoscope at home
Holding the sharded road noise through its neck
I was given
A box of toys for doctors
A gavel to dismiss a knee
A light that brought out blood behind the human lens
A funnel for ears, every size compatible with the hunt
A list of every kind of fire, each paired to a telephone
Linens ruled the backstairs
Long coats, overshoe slippers
Sheets fashioned after whales
A weepable top-eye
Like the extinct rorquals and those living
Each holed linen paired with burstable ampules
Bleach and spirits
To rub through the eye to
The skin
Like church art not one thing had a meaningful back
This was not church my friends were not absent I was still
In sin possibly late and it was a tower after all
A wreath on the table chewing itself softly
Like a dog on its own tail
Bells were pulled for almost nothing, just counting
Unlike year or season, the week is not real in sky terms
In the tower the best medicines
In two bags like twins
Brought together, are strong on the spot
One does not believe in them
One rather steps abreast of their system
And observes outcomes from
The oily and marine ones, the powders, gases
One does not depart
The tower is too awake
And discloses new extensions off
Its telescope spine
The color of dried yogurt
One stays then and the world
Walks out as though at large