Member-only story
Emergency Rooms
a poem about emergency rooms
On the way you imagine different things:
ten-inch scalpels,
an escaped killer virus,
primordial machines,
screaming in the waiting room.
It’s always quiet when you get there though.
Nurses wait with their digital thermometers,
Janitors do their work with silent efficiency,
And if there has been blood left behind
It has long since been cleared away.
The waiting room is decorated in orange and blue
And there is a television with colored static
If you don’t care for the magazines
With their covers torn off.
Inside those rooms where things are done
It’s quieter still.
Glass cases reveal unrolled bundles of gauze,
Scattered band-aids in cold steel trays,
Under posters depicting burn procedures.
The doctors use their calm voices as they measure
the extent of damage and stitch closed the wounds that gape
like a screamer’ mouth. They will ask you
the president’s name as if it had…
