Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Bird Neck

What’s my basic unit of currency?
It’s not dollars.
Each patient makes a withdrawal.

What’s the exchange rate?
It’s not Medicare payments.
Each prayer makes a deposit.

Fifteen years since he tested poz.
His first doctor visit with me
is supposed to last seven minutes.

His eyes are already red.
I take in his cornrowed hair,
his hollowed cheeks. My cold hands

on his bird neck feel dismay, but my note
says adenopathy. I haven’t felt
those shotty lymph nodes in a long time.

Why am I still doing this?
Each poem I write is an interim
statement, so I can be reconciled.

 About This Poem:

• This was my first poem accepted for publication. It appeared in the 2004 issue of the Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts. My physician-poet colleague, Kelley Jean White, MD, was the editor at the time. She was doing a themed issue on healthcare. Many years later, I had a second poem accepted to this journal. 

• I wrote the poem in January 2004 at my very first Winter Getaway with Peter Murphy. The gentle and talented Priscilla Orr was the poet who facilitated the table where we read our newly written poems. She congratulated me on nailing the prompt, which was to write something about money. Then she suggested that I write more about the young man in the poem. I added a stanza, and that was the version that got accepted.
• The original title for this poem was “Office Visit.” I changed the title at Barb Daniels’ suggestion. She was reviewing the table of contents for my chapbook, and she thought a stronger title would draw people into the poem when they first opened the book.