Dave Shortt
THE NURSES
‘no false moves,’
patience (transfused in blood's torrent)
clots in unity of resectionings & sutures,
hands savoring compassion
maintain a diagnosed dignity
in their palms as a form of praise,
sanitizing lotions are wrung,
that entice radical hospitality
from scar tissue & variable temperatures
of a new normal in another body
as if by secular madonnas & neophytes,
falls are broken,
as fevers bottom out
in ungendered permissions of chivalry
to touch the hole
light in which they enter the room
from beyond the water,
beyond the cure watching over them
nearer to their own healthy child
who will naturally live forever
no more private parts,
timidity commanded as if by miracle
(of modern medicine), commandeered
to surrender any wanton anatomy
a fleshed-out geography sentient with (life) signs:
physiology’s priority
would never admit disgust
for a treatment cultivated with tattoos
be assured in an emergency smile,
& won’t tissues still function
with a toy's simplicity?
‘blood is a normal symptom’
of there being such little time
to get to know anything of each other, because
weight & height are also
meals never to be shared
but a name
is the first sign of recovery,
forgotten a few times
(care is mortal here) so
is there a way to remember it?
no, only the inevitable moments
of emptying & filling
when another uniform of gauze
soaks up a room’s darkness,
& questions are secreted
into the backs of whiteness
as it leaves again
the moon-breast is still offered
to stone mouths helpless with
innate dust,
flesh dwindles into
disease, or longing to go back
to soluble kisses too tiny
for a bottled alternative,
& to soft fruit wielded as ammunition
in childhood warfare
water is brought in fundamental maintenance
of the empire of medicine,
even Mars glows like a red cross,
somewhere troops & civilians wait
to be baptized on the pulse
against the puddled infirmities of desire
& IF ARCTIC OCEAN OIL COMES
to heat genetically modified nights.....
aberrant sheaf-waif saboteurs abort,
wrenched from palatial corn pregnancies
feel a furrier’s one rotten tooth where
a narwhal is stranded
under terms of bedtimes of rainforest flower sedation,
hydrocarbon mandala molecular structures
are trailed by monstrous faults that slipped
in the direction of heat & its
luxuriant gases
storms deliberate while finger foods dried out & dropped
into wells of psyche
lined with polyethylene below ice, as
a convection cycle warms the wits
of a landfill attendant slowly
taming snarling consumptive rush hours seen completely
through green glass, & quieting
the clang of murky oyster-tin suburbs
exploding in a biphenyl mist indoctrinating
the skin with overheating & motion sickness
between slick babies, the demise
of fossil fuel is
a flint glance of an au pair into
the cradled eye of a petrodollared heir
in whom wildcat ideas begin kaleidoscoping
like gasoline spreading over water, ideas
spurred on later
by a monkeyed-with valve,
or indulged in red-light parts of towns
lit by smutty cousin coal, or
annihilated (Atlantises)
in a cold sea
drilled with bits of long-shot coral
& krill beaming phosphorescent
in tsunami startups trying to cover
thermodynamic mistakes or
spills of sunlight
‘no false moves,’
patience (transfused in blood's torrent)
clots in unity of resectionings & sutures,
hands savoring compassion
maintain a diagnosed dignity
in their palms as a form of praise,
sanitizing lotions are wrung,
that entice radical hospitality
from scar tissue & variable temperatures
of a new normal in another body
as if by secular madonnas & neophytes,
falls are broken,
as fevers bottom out
in ungendered permissions of chivalry
to touch the hole
light in which they enter the room
from beyond the water,
beyond the cure watching over them
nearer to their own healthy child
who will naturally live forever
no more private parts,
timidity commanded as if by miracle
(of modern medicine), commandeered
to surrender any wanton anatomy
a fleshed-out geography sentient with (life) signs:
physiology’s priority
would never admit disgust
for a treatment cultivated with tattoos
be assured in an emergency smile,
& won’t tissues still function
with a toy's simplicity?
‘blood is a normal symptom’
of there being such little time
to get to know anything of each other, because
weight & height are also
meals never to be shared
but a name
is the first sign of recovery,
forgotten a few times
(care is mortal here) so
is there a way to remember it?
no, only the inevitable moments
of emptying & filling
when another uniform of gauze
soaks up a room’s darkness,
& questions are secreted
into the backs of whiteness
as it leaves again
the moon-breast is still offered
to stone mouths helpless with
innate dust,
flesh dwindles into
disease, or longing to go back
to soluble kisses too tiny
for a bottled alternative,
& to soft fruit wielded as ammunition
in childhood warfare
water is brought in fundamental maintenance
of the empire of medicine,
even Mars glows like a red cross,
somewhere troops & civilians wait
to be baptized on the pulse
against the puddled infirmities of desire
& IF ARCTIC OCEAN OIL COMES
to heat genetically modified nights.....
aberrant sheaf-waif saboteurs abort,
wrenched from palatial corn pregnancies
feel a furrier’s one rotten tooth where
a narwhal is stranded
under terms of bedtimes of rainforest flower sedation,
hydrocarbon mandala molecular structures
are trailed by monstrous faults that slipped
in the direction of heat & its
luxuriant gases
storms deliberate while finger foods dried out & dropped
into wells of psyche
lined with polyethylene below ice, as
a convection cycle warms the wits
of a landfill attendant slowly
taming snarling consumptive rush hours seen completely
through green glass, & quieting
the clang of murky oyster-tin suburbs
exploding in a biphenyl mist indoctrinating
the skin with overheating & motion sickness
between slick babies, the demise
of fossil fuel is
a flint glance of an au pair into
the cradled eye of a petrodollared heir
in whom wildcat ideas begin kaleidoscoping
like gasoline spreading over water, ideas
spurred on later
by a monkeyed-with valve,
or indulged in red-light parts of towns
lit by smutty cousin coal, or
annihilated (Atlantises)
in a cold sea
drilled with bits of long-shot coral
& krill beaming phosphorescent
in tsunami startups trying to cover
thermodynamic mistakes or
spills of sunlight
© Copyright Dave Shortt 2020
Dave Shortt is a longtime writer (American) whose work has appeared over the years in a number of online and print literary-type venues, most recently Silver Pinion, Blaze Vox, Amethyst Review, and Pangolin Review. More of his poems can be found in Ekphrastic Review, the print anthology Emanations: Chorus Pleiades, as well as in Molly Bloom 14.