Erin Belieu
Science in its tedium reveals that every spirit
we spirit ganks a solid half hour from

our life spans. So says my doctor, a watery,

Jesus-eyed man, and hard to suffer
with his well-intended scrips for yoga

and neti pots, notably stingy with the better

drugs, in situ here amid the disinfected
toys, dreadful in their plastic baskets.

Above his head, the flayed men of medical
illustration are nailed for something like

décor. The eyeball scheme is best,

with its wondrous canal of Schlemm,
first favorite of all weirdly named

eponymous body parts. It’s just a splotch
of violet on the diagram, but without it

our aqueous humors would burst
their meshy dams and overflow. Dust

thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken
of the soul... is what I quote him

as he thumps my back with his tiny
doctor’s tomahawk. But he’s used to me.

We have an understanding. What he
means to miser, I’ve come to spend

most lavishly. And I feel fortunate again
to be historically shaky in the maths,
enough to avoid making an easy sum

of my truly happy hours, or nights curled

sulfurous on my side, a priced-to-sell
shrimp boiling in anxious sleep.

If we’re lucky, it’s always a terrible time

to die. Better the privilege of booze
than the whim of one more shambolic

butcher shelling peasants in a wood,
our world’s long spree of Caesars

starting wars to pay their bills
in any given era’s Rome. Turns out,

Longfellow’s stomach did for him,
and he died thirsty, calling for more opium.

Free of the exam room now, I spot the same

busted goldfish in his smeary bowl
beside the door where he’s glugged along

for years, a mostly failed distraction

for poxed or broken children. I raise my fin
to him, celebrate the poison we’re all

swimming in, remembering the way
you say cheers in Hungarian:

Isten, Isten, meaning,
in translation, “I’m a god. You’re a god.”
from the book COME-HITHER HONEYCOMB / Copper Canyon Press
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I read a study printed in the Times that quantifies how many minutes every cocktail we drink takes off our lives. Which hit me as darkly funny while living through Trump's reign of evil. Like, seriously? THIS is what you want us to worry about right now?? It also considers the absurdity of doctors' offices—which bring out my rebellious streak. My doctor is a very patient man.  

Erin Belieu on "Pity the Doctor, Not the Disease"
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Yi Sang: Selected Works

"Yi Sang’s Korean and Japanese poems, essays, and stories address imperialism, war, childhood, art, and capitalism; they take units of language and spin them into larger webs. Because language refers to language, it can be spun into poetry; because it refers to creatures and events, it can be spun into story; because it refers to the self and its experiences, it can be spun into essay."
 
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