Because they find something you don't
want. That's their job, finding trouble. They impose
music you'd never choose, a paper gown, a cold room,
then force you to disrobe and uncover
information you've hidden for years—
you're overweight, or under, need more exercise,
less caffeine, and everything you love
is dangerous. You've never been this exposed.

You cough and breathe, cough and breathe.
They listen to your heart, a cold disk placed
on chest and back, alarm on their faces, suspicious
of this and that, as if your heart were a criminal,
which often it is.

                              They misread the flutters, leaps,
and flips as disease—myocardial infarction,
atrial fibrillation, endocarditis—when you know deep
in your heart that it's fear you feel and you awake each day
not with joy but despair, heartachy, heartsick, heartbroken,
like some cheesy country western song.

                                                                  So what
can a doctor do? Cut it, stitch it,
repair it? Reach in his fist and rip out
the organ? It's already gone. And the pain
you feel is the phantom kind as when
a leg's blown off after stepping
on a landmine, and even years later the fugitive
limb still throbs to the beat.

Volume 1, Issue 1, 2006