Medical Literary Messenger
(Online) November 2024
(Online) November 2024
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Waiting Room (A Haibun)
In the waiting room, he finds himself among twelve phoneheads and only two booksters: one’s a Biblist and the other is clearly an ancient Beatnik reading some Ferlinghetti. If he were home, he’d be enjoying his solitude. He’d be inhaling some sandalwood incense and maybe allowing a little Susumu Yokota to lift and float him away to a more perfect world. But he’s not home. He’s in a waiting room, waiting. He knows that when the door opens and they call his name he’ll be moving into another world altogether. He can only hope that it will be a more perfect world. Or: he could just go home and be there.
The Waiting Room Blues
overhead speakers silent
time at a standstill
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Early Release Likely
Saturation Level
Heart Rate
Pressure
everything on the board
has an asterisk
Same old story:
doze for an hour
wake up stunned,
pounding, breathless;
ready to explode
He might go home
(one way or another)
tomorrow
or maybe
today’s tomorrow.
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After his sixth day
listening to beepers
tangled in wires
plugged into monitors and
injected and injected again
and again and again
his seventh day dawned.
He closed his eyes
and it occurred to him:
it was only Tuesday,
not his usual day of rest.