At the Hospital

Ngoc Pham

for the Dead and Rapidly Decaying (see also:
Institute for the Nutritionally Challenged, All-You-Can-Eat),
I collaged in the Solarium, clipping my medical record,
women laughing with salad bowls
from donated Country Livings. Sun pulsed
in my NG tube like prescribed
photosynthesis. In the basement dining room,
we scraped our plates, licked our yogurt lids,
played another round of Family Feud.
Name 10 things you keep in your wallet. 8 things
people most often lose. I tracked shadows of bird
decals a nurse put on our windows after they found
piles of dead pigeons outside, their intricate circuitries
corrupted by artificial lights.
When they unlatched the gates at 7, herded
us out onto the trail, we watched bats
darken the sky in droves, threw pebbles
to watch them dive, not out of cruelty, at least
not entirely.
I asked my dead grandfather
for a sign through moths or fireflies.
Instead, he sent weevil larva spilling from acorns.
I asked the bees burrowing in hollyhocks for a sign,
despite forest fires, Colony Collapse Disorder, pesticide
dripping down hollowed hives.
Asked cicada broods, winged tinderboxes
of inexplicable desires, only puffs of husks by September.
Asked them how they knew when to call it quits.
Asked the crows clawing through our scraps, driven by nothing
but hunger, their bird brains tuned to survival’s thrum.
I told the doctor I wanted to die and he upped my venlafaxine.
I told the chaplain I wanted to die. She gave me a copy of “Wild Geese.”
Said to let the soft animal of my body
love what it loves but never told me how.

Ngoc Pham is a Vietnamese poet. Their poems can be found on Poets.org and The Adroit Journal, and in the anthology Dear Human at the Edge of Time. They are currently an MFA student in Poetry and instructor at Cornell University.