Set
I’ve broken so
many bones,
that the word
fracture might
as well be father.
I love you, fracture…
Each cast was
a coffin, and home
room, a kind of wake
where the mourners
signed my body.
Punning, the doctor
said, “You’re all set!”
Every femur
needs a foster
placement.
*
Ralph James Savarese is the author of three collections of poetry: Republican Fathers; When This Is Over; and, with Stephen Kuusisto, Someone Falls Overboard: Talking through Poems.
wow, I love the play of this metaphor, despite the gravity of the subject. a wonderful poem. It hurts me, even as I admire it.
Always a mixture of pleasure and pain in an RJS poem. Ralph Savarese uses his surgical skill-set with MASH-like brevity: borrowing high-intensity scenes from life, re-contextualising them with Radar’s gentleness, compassion & innate justice.
Always, all ways, great to read not once,
but thrice.