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 Blood Truck by Sophie Summertown Grimes Choke by Alyson Miller Dead See Scroll by Rich Murphy Deciding Not to Wear Glasses by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee 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

Discovery: Negative Return

18022
by Tara Skurtu



Seven tubes of blood in a neat line. A needle longer
than a finger slides into the muscle between ribs.
A spaghetti strand of organ suspended in clear solution.
 
Some days my doctor says you have to napalm
the napalm, but this morning he says undetectable,
and it’s Thursday the 29th of September, 1988 again—
 
on the news, Discovery is inching closer and closer
to the moment of truth. I’m outside with my class, squinting
at a trail of cloud as Discovery’s pinprick spark disappears.
 
For every disbelief, an equal and opposite belief. Outside
the blood draw clinic, I believe I see a passenger plane—
upside down, dragging backwards, it banks to a still speck.




first published in Memorious
also included in Skurtu's new book The Amoeba Game (Eyewear Publishing)

 

 

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