Paul Hlava Ceballos
Poems from Hospital Pamphlet
—
Heads up your next patient is a felon
is whispered to me in the hall, heads up
you can remove your name badge
can request he’s handcuffed to the bed
bright orange and chained to
a wheelchair, his heavy face is pulled
by the weight of lost decades
what I ask of him, he does obediently
tired and mute while two armed police
stand behind me in the hospital room
is this what Luchito is like now
20 years after cops tazed him, weed-cloudy
amidst the shattered store window
of his teenage collapse into mania
is this what the 1 in 3 black boys are like
who were never given the chance
to fuck up like me, tearing 60 down
residential streets, screaming at the dash
that my friend was gone now, bag of weed
safe with coins in my cupholder
my fingers imprint the prisoner’s
edematous skin, hypertensive from salt
while an officer behind me is cell phone lit
with hand casually resting on his gun
I have never seen this patient before
how many long years was his hospital wait
he sat meekly and arranged his stained
undershirt, chains preventing wrinkled
arms from reaching fully up, mucus
roiled deep inside each forced inhale
when I say he was a sick man, let me
make the language clear, we must burn
each police station to the ground
and every cop must pay for their crimes
against the community they patrol
I pledge this with fire in my throat because
I survived to diagnose and do no harm
—
It was the classic presentation
chest caved in on the stairwell
EKG showed elevated T-waves
his father died of a heart attack
in his village back home, he says
with a polite smile as I tape twelve
electrodes to his chest, I am thinking
of George Floyd, a former football champ
who worked at the Salvation Army
a black man murdered by a policeman’s
choice to bring them both
to searing summer asphalt
I am thinking about George Floyd because
a coworker said protests are fine
but she disagrees with damaging
a Nordstrom Rack, we need order, she said
alone in a hospital after severe pain
the man is laughing on the treadmill
each step is a belief in the nurses and system
that will convey him to new health
and then his blood pressure
drops, he clutches his chest
on my screen his heart is a perfect
failed machine, rounded apex immobile
gasps for air pumped nowhere
sometimes we must create
an emergency to understand
what pathology was always there
and the next day he got a stent
and stopped by to say thank you
(how rare!) before going home
where dusk set the sky on fire
—
Briefly, I see my reflection
sway backward in the dusk-dark
window and grasp
the coma patient’s bed as a brace
it wasn’t my reflection, it was
a white-gowned woman
in the room facing us
leaning down to pack her bags
—Submitted on
Paul Hlava Ceballos has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Artist Trust, and the Poets House. His work has been published in Narrative Magazine, BOMB, the PEN Poetry Series, Acentos Review, and the LA Times, among other journals and newspapers, and has been translated to the Ukrainian, and nominated for the Pushcart. He holds an MFA from NYU and currently lives in Seattle, where he practices echocardiography.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.