At Providence Hospital
BY KYLAN RICE

I realize there are really no doctors here.
No eye-man or blood-guy
or anyone to separate
white from wine
colored pills: keeping Codeine
from the common aspirin.
The male nurses are out in the dark park
dreaming of soda & snow.
Orderlies try to be secret about
getting blood from their shirt fronts,
muttering the Lord fucking
well taketh away is right!
Some get a dose
of heavy rope or Hydro-
codone, but every patient knows
it's a honey water tea with
whiskey if they're lucky.
It is easy to say to myself, God
hath brought me here.
It's easy to suck the bullet
from the shoulder of a second-
grader & spit meekly
into silver trays,
easy to knit the heart back
to its warm wall,
easy to slap a scanner & a siren on a van
& haul it through the night.
There—I have caught
your one drop of blood,
your one red bead
before it broke at all against the gold
air around Mary.
I keep it in my pocket.
I keep it for emergencies.

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Kylan Rice has poetry published or forthcoming in The Examined Life, Thrush, decomP magazinE, Brusque Magazine, and elsewhere. He is editor for Likewise Folio. He lives in Utah.