The Thing Is

All the things that can go wrong with a body
could fill a book. Lots of books. A whole medical library.
But the thing is, there’s no point in naming them here.
Names that are sometimes long and sometimes short,
sometimes Greek and sometimes Latin. And sometimes
the person who first noticed, studied, and isolated a thing
that went wrong with a body ends up giving his name
to that thing. And thenceforth the people whose bodies
have that thing are given that name for the thing they have.
Which is a nameless thing, really. Nameless as a thousand
dialects of pain. Nevertheless, people are sometimes
made to feel better when given a name for the thing
they have. At least it’s a thing, they think. It wasn’t just
in their heads. But everything is a thing before it is given
a name. Even the body you have, or, more accurately, are,
was a body before it was named. And it goes back to being one.
And that’s all that’s ever wrong with a body. That’s the thing.

Indolent

“If you’re going to get cancer
this is the one to get,”
said my radiation oncologist.
“It isn’t the aggressive kind.
It’s what they call the indolent kind.
Hell, you’ll probably get hit by a bus
before you die of this thing.”
And he looked out the window.
And I looked out the window.
There was a bus stop
across the street. But there wasn’t
a bus. And there were no people waiting
for the bus. Nevertheless, it was a bus stop
the way the cancer was a cancer. It was
official. You could look it up
on the transit authority’s list of city bus stops
and there it would be: #39 on the corner
of Walnut and Peabody. You could
go to radiation oncology and there
I would be: 51 with my cancer, the one
to get, the indolent kind that misses
the doctor’s appointment
because it missed the #39 bus
because it couldn’t get out of bed this morning
because it was having such a wonderful dream,
a flying dream in which, amazingly,
just by doing nothing,
by remaining absolutely still,
suddenly you’re flying.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. You can find Paul at: paulhostovsky.co