Waiting Room
Let me be laminate, like the prototype pinned
to the wall at the doctor’s office, body glossed
in primary colors. Let captions speak clearly
for me, as for that flat man, organs outlined
in white balloons around him.
Make me a model for others to look to—
map of evident vessels uncovered to science
in lustrous, alive-looking branches.
Let me not be a problem,
a puzzle, pileup on the morning commute,
no discernible source and no exit.
All waiting here stare
at the horizon’s thin slit, sealed
in the distance, as though we might will it
to speak. Any breath, any answer
seems better than none, any wreck
we might tunnel toward,
the stunned aftermath we might finally
inch our way past,
peruse for our own lives within.
The specialist’s named
Dr. Paine, no joke, which reminds me of Crusher
on Star Trek. She had some kind of scanner
she’d wave over her patients’
abdomens. Just that, and their innards
would sing out their secrets.
Nothing unknown
in the light-zooming future.
No body beasted, animal
in a snap trap, fractured and thrashing
its dumbfounded hurt in a crawlspace,
pinned with no coat of miraculous
plastic, no words to speak with,
no admirable shine.
*
Clara McLean lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Terrain.org, Foglifter, Valparaiso Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Cider Press Review, West Trestle Review, and The Comstock Review, among other publications, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can find her at claradmclean.com
