In the Waiting Room, still
after Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room”
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
In the United States of America, specifically New York City,
I went with Mama to her PET scan appointment.
We the people sit up, on edge, in the waiting room.
The sun has left us.
Crickets are louder.
We think we know.
But it is too early to call.
We are all in the dark until
The Machine radioactivates.
Our ears are met with music, maybe noise?
…the kkking of all sir dduke
And with a Voice like Ella’s* ringing out
There’s no way the Band can lose…
As the horn of Gabriel plays its final notes,
we the people can feel it
all over.
The television above us is muted but I can read CNN’s closed captions,
It is improbable, at the moment, let’s just be honest about it, but not impossible…
We the waiting,
A carcass caucus—
A split of presidential metastatic masses.
Did you not see the morgue mobiles take your mothers?
I know you want to die but do not fucking take us with you.
The results are in,
bronchial branches are fragile kindling, now lit
Akin to Lazarus’s Colossus herself; Lady Liberty’s torch.
It is unfortunate that some flames never burn out
without melting the women who hold its heavy handle.
Though—
We do not yet know
If the sun will return,
for it is still an early November night.
* Spanish: Her