A Body Wholly Body by Jeff Newberry

A Body Wholly Body

There is order in the way the nurse calls
me back to the scale, where I step
up to be weighed and therefore judged.
I’m taken to a small room to await
the coming doctor—sans plague mask—
who enters with on light feet
and sits, taps a clipboard, and prophesies
my future of fat, my heart, my veins
thick with cholesterolled sludge.
The heart beats. The blood pumps.
The pricked index tells my story
of late-night snack cakes and long
afternoons spent, legs crossed, a book
on my lap instead of placing one foot
in front of the other on a track or street.
My body is bonded and printed
on neat white paper. My body
is signed and directed to a lab
where a bored nurse draws more blood.
Everything lined, sketched, and charted.
Tell me, if you know, my doctor,
why the pale light of this exam room
and the cold steel of the exam table
call to mind a chilly January
when they laid my father in a coffin.
Tell me why when I look back
on that day, I remember nothing
save silence and the weight of a body
laid low, sinking down into the earth.

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Jeff Newberry’s most recent book is the hybrid collection Frames: A Memoir (Another New Calligraphy). His writing has appeared in a number of print and online publications, recently appearing in Stone Circle Review, Sursurrus, and Sugar House Review.