antiBODY
An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine Main Menu Foreword Introduction At the Teaching Hospital by Dan Kraines Atrophy by Paul Blom Barnacled to the Bone by Stephen C. Middleton Biopsy by Julie Rosenzweig Choke by Alyson Miller Dead See Scroll by Rich Murphy Deciding Not to Wear Glasses by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee Discovery: Negative Return by Tara Skurtu Exile by Lane Falcon Flush by Stephen Mead Fruit By Tyler Chadwick Grandmother Dead, Then Alive, Then Dead Again by Matthew Baker Hysteria by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee If Not Absolution by Matthew Baker Lack by Sarah Anderson Wood Mirena by Meagan Grant Mittelschmerz by Sarah Kersey Moon Child by Lisa Hiton pecan, rodef, clam by Susan Comninos Refugees by Walt Peterson She Cannot Let Him Go by Nancy Smiler Levinson Some Days Begin Like This by Tara Skurtu The Mechanics of Love by Victoria Gatehouse The Needle by Isla McKetta There Was Beauty in That Graph by Geralyn Pinto [Untitled] by Nan Darbous Marthaller [Untitled] by Nan Darbous Marthaller Contributors

Blood Truck

18022
by Sophie Summertown Grimes



I sit on a padded bench next to a woman in shabby clothes.
I’m nervous, I tell her. It’s a good thing to do, she says.
 
We watch a woman scroll through her feed while a bag
plumps as it rocks, and a nurse moves bins around,
 
uses a pen to mark a clipboard, and talks about
Popeyes tempting her for lunch,
 
how she could feel it pulling her
as gravity pulls the blood out of the man’s arm
 
in the other chair and into the small belly of his bag.
They hook up the woman in the shabby clothes
 
and then it’s my turn. I look out the window at the sidewalk
while she does it. Like, you’ll eat chicken but rather not see
 
how it’s prepared. I’ll do the good thing, but I won’t look
at how I did it. The woman in the shabby clothes doesn’t feel well
 
and they have her put her knees up and lie back. They give her juice.
The nurse leaves for Popeyes. The blood leaves my body
 
through a tube and a needle that will never be used again.
The name for the quick intake of blood into a butterfly needle
 
is called the flash. How pretty that is.
There are cookies by the door. I don’t feel woozy.
 
In my office, I’ve left a YouTube video of the sound of rain playing.
When I put my headphones on, I mistake it for resounding applause. 
 

 

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