D. Nurkse The Waiting Room She said her ex-husband was a general in the Mexican Army, a spy, a brain surgeon who implanted circuits in her mind, then stalked her, followed her even down these corridors that end in a frosted glass door, an alcove with a slit sofa, a pie dish full of white ash and a lucite picture of Saint Jude: and here she found me with my name scratched from my bracelet, I too longing for the lover who healed me in a past life. (Prior publ.: Poetry) ~ . How We Are Made Light Pity the visitors bent under shopping bags, who have kept their huge hats here where there are no seasons, who run from station to station with a question so inconsequential even we patients smile. Admire the nurse and the aide who fill out a form, one beginning at the front, the other at the end, speaking of Bon Jovi; the doctors, washing side by side, discussing an even greater doctor; most of all, revere the orderlies who have come from across the sea to wheel us through the corridors to a place where we will be tested, where we will finally belong even more inherently than here, where we will no longer be watchers but the matter itself, flesh and soul transposed to degrees on a scale of radiance. (Prior publ.: Poetry) ~ . At Holy Name The fatigue of the nurse waiting with the bedpan, her mind drifting to a lover's sarcasm; the unseen child crying; the panic of the fly caught in the embrasure of the window that does not open; only these are real: yet I still feel my mother's hand cool on my forehead and her comb untangling the snarl of a long dream. (Prior publ.: Poetry) ~ . A Night At Mount Sinai 1 The voices return saying 'cole slaw' while I'm eating cole slaw: what's terrifying about that? Isn't cole slaw shredded cabbage, or did the voices just explain that? With a little 'mayo'? Or was it plain mayo? Surely they are gods without souls. Did they order: napkin? fork? knife? Why with a knife when this substance is nameless and passes through me as if I were the Kingdom— and if I resist there is no I. 2 I invented this spoon, And this salt-cellar— someone else made it and punched the tiny holes, but I conceived it: I saw it in a dream and heard the word: salt-cellar! and no one woke me. (Prior publ.: Arete, U.K.) ~ . Side-Effects Of Colirium 1 Stifling laughter, but no one to feel it. We all roll around helpless, doctor, nurse, patient, like marbles in a bowl—whose joke is this? The little slice of green grape suspended in the lime-cherry jello is killingly funny, and here we are with our feet in the air admiring the little pockmarks in the acoustic tile ceiling— but they're a riot too! Pores in father's nose! And even the guards subduing us are giggling, wrestling us down and yet waiting, deep within themselves, for a punchline, any punchline... 2 And I in your arms again. ~ . Back Wards A fly might influence us, so we would crawl on our beds, rub our legs together, hop backwards, twitch, touch our bread all over without eating it. If a voice in the corridor said Good Morning we suffered ecstasy but if it forecast rain we panicked: fatal mistake a moment before healing. How we feared the visitors! —huge clammy hands sometimes not even clean, palpating as if suffering had ripened us like fruit. Did we suffer or they? When they were gone we bragged of them: their size, heft, hue, the insoluble love that drove them to Mercy instead of bridge or tennis: how they came to look like us— a crease between the eyes that was either sorrow or a hard presentiment; the gifts they brought us: grapes, magazines, many Bibles differing in key passages, little empty boxes, wiltless flowers, ribbons, trophies for enduring, for never sleeping, for constant waiting— while further in the ward the real patients lie who have no names, whom no one visits, whose cries you might hear if the gunplay faltered on the high screens: they cry without will, helpless as passing clouds, just voices, and we, we would know them and cry for ourselves. (Prior publ.: North American Review.) ~ . The Parasite The doctor looked angry and I too began to choke with rage at all those shadows who take up all our time with their uncontrollable desire. The doctor removed his glasses and began to clean them pensively with the hem of his gown. The room became hazy, intimate. A file cabinet hovered beside me. The doctor was a small white cloud. At once I saw clearly: it was all my fault. The bitterness, dizziness in middle age, a fall, the beautiful work suddenly turned incoherent. The doctor put his fingers together as if they fitted in a special way— a gesture that would take years to master and there was so little time, every second was measured— and he spoke very softly. I sensed his great weariness. I wanted to rock him in my arms. Rest, he said, night after night of sleep without terrible dreams And work. And loved ones. Patience, said the doctor, barely audible above the sweet constant music. (Prior. publ.: Poetry) ~ . A Prayer For Patience In Sickness I waited for you as a child memorizing the signet-ring scratches on the cut-glass doorknob until I expected no one and into the small hours when I no longer expected to be myself if the door should open.       Now you are here at the other end of my life and you are the silence in the room, the light sweeping from wall to wall, fever itself, no longer just my father. (Prior publ.: Pivot) (D. Nurkse's recent books, all from Four Way Books, are The Rules of Paradise, Leaving Xaia and Voices over Water. The Fall is forthcoming from Knopf.)