Reading the New Yorker at the Gut Doctor-Benjamin Nardolilli
Reading the New Yorker at the Gut Doctor
By Benjamin Nardolilli
I feel proud,
I walked all the way here,
Who else in this waiting room
Can say that?
In Chinese and English,
A sign lets me know that I am safe,
There is a phone that sits and purrs
Waiting for an emergency.
I have brought things
That I should be reading,
But look at the magazines
My doctor has prescribed
An old woman looks at me,
While I look at the magazine
And she wonders,
Her own private theodicy
What is it all worth?
When someone young like me
Has to wait in a place like this?
Reading about Joan Didion’s new play,
I read her once, can’t remember what,
But I remember why,
The requirements for a composition class.
The writer of the essay wonders, and so do I
Why put your suffering on a stage,
When it fits much better inside a page?
A man with charts and chants of cheer
Waits, the doctor’s white hand brings him in,
He is not a patient and the medicine man
Must listen to him, he has the bottom line.
I can’t make sense of Don Delillo’s story,
My comprehension turns to dust.
Like the breath of wind
Made from a butterfly’s flapping on my ear,
I can hear the receptionist slowly squeezing
Shut a patient’s diet over the phone,
First rice, then gelatin,
Then broth, then water.
I skip the words,
And read the cartoons,
I feel proud.
I get each one.
Copyright C. 2008 Benjamin Nardolilli