Rob Jacques
Interrogation
He’s older, impartial, somewhat benign (but not entirely),
this stethoscoped man in his starched, white coat,
and he sets himself down in front of yet another one,
this time you, his three-fifteen appointment, idiopathic,
an adult male patient presenting nondescript symptoms,
and he throws a stern glance your way; that is to say,
he looks not directly at you, but rather takes you in,
you with your unappealing auras of pathos and need.
His medical certificates with seals hang on a plain wall
among incongruous photos of someone’s summer
in Vichy, another copy of Ponte Vecchio, and a sepia
of Florence under Borgia rule. You’d like to ask polite,
ice-breaking questions, but you don’t have in common
enough experiences for banter, and you fear you know
less about the Borgias, Florence, and Vichy than you do
about bothering problems and why they drove you here.
Besides, he’s already flipping through your thin folder,
frowning, presumably trying to recall who you really are
and why he should care, other than he must deal from
his paid position, his Hippocratic oath, and bald curiosity.
Be careful. He doesn’t want to know more than he has to.
And you don’t want to share intimacies with a total stranger
who, after all, knows nothing factual about you other than
vulnerable flesh (and even that in a non-pleasurable way).
He straightens and says, “What seems to be the problem?”
to which you babble your symptoms that sound silly now,
stuff about dry coughing, waking with a morning headache,
night sweats alternating with chills, chronic dry mouth,
a slight dizziness really more of a mere lightheadedness,
really nothing too severe, nothing you aren’t getting used to,
nothing you can’t live with if it comes right down to it,
and several other unrelated pricks and tingles here and there
that disturb your conscious efforts to be normal. You strive
to tell him everything physical that surrounds what sits
centered in the slippery silence between sentences and waits.
You know it will end. You will be done and leave soon
with few facts and more questions, with renewed waiting
on your wrinkled hands. You won’t have told him everything,
although he’s trained to guess that accurately, fill in the blanks
and report whatever needs reporting to those who get reports.
Sometimes you want to cry out, though you know you won’t.
You know why they say confession is good for the soul, know
at times you feel the needle going in, know at times you don’t.
Rob Jacques is the author of War Poet Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, Amsterdam Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Healing Muse, and Assaracus. He lives on a rural island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.