X-rays ain’t like in movies, you know.
Skeletons standing stark white on sheets
slapped against flat lamps by while
Doc pushes glasses up on the bridge
of the nose and scrunches the brow
to see things for how they are.
It’s all digital now and all of you is
up there, the rump wrinkles sagging
down like lines of ants meeting at
base camp, intestinal bulges like
strings of plateaus photographed
on the surface of Mars and the soft
contours of shadow like trickling
pencil lines that trace down the femur
so they resemble bark shards on redwoods
big as life right there on my monitor.
Gladys here has hips like hemispheres
with Monopoly houses fixed at the base
to join the pelvis and leg, the implants are
white as light with every angle and line
straight and true, seeing that perfection
against the muddled, hazy, fluid chaos
of anatomy is like seeing a Church’s
Chicken in the middle of a rainforest.
Oh Gladys, who done this to you, baby?
I picture a yipping dog on a tangled leash
and a tall staircase or a shower curtain
being pulled frantically off those little
plastic rings or maybe time was your
attacker. Time went and did you this way.
Now I betcha never woulda thought when
you had those x-rays that an ex-con
on minimum wage would get to see you
like this but see it’s all digital now
and everything from the old server needs
moved to the new one, and it’s got to be
done manually according to law
so here we both are I’m sorry to say.
