Member-only story
Mercy
a poem about doctors
Doctors have no mercy on the body,
They use steel pins and poisons and abrasives,
Rip out veins to open up arteries, suck the marrow
From the bone for the blood cells, taunt the
Immune system with impotent viruses.
Physicians tinker with the liver, squeeze the heart and lungs,
Sift through the amniotic fluid to verify the slow
Turn of the fetus. All to straighten the gut, alter the force
Of the heart beat, rectify the genetic manufacture of secretions.
Surgeons have no time in the golden hour
For the gentle arts, the cool palm
Against the feverish brow. There are bones to be broken
And reset, strips of skin slivered off and repasted elsewhere,
Ocular fluids adjusted to correct refractions of light.
Doctors earn their trade in lecture halls, dissect
tissue, race the future of death in relays,
All to clear the channels that allow
Healing at last to begin.
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Copyright 2019 Marguerite Floyd all rights reserved
