Memorial Sloane Kettering, 2007

9:30. Upper East Side. A neighborhood
I hadn’t walked in in years,
though a group of my peers loiter outside
some with cigarettes,
some with cell phones,
some unwrapping the cellophane from a sandwich
—just a little more litter for the world—
before slumping against the cement foundation
strung out from work & witness.
My coffee exhales into morning light
smelling of Columbia, of Arabica.
This could have been the velvet line
waiting for some club to open its doors
a decade back, in our decadent, care-free twenties,
but I recognize no one
& no one checks my ID in the lobby.
No one shouts & pushes
to get up front. The alcohol scent astringent.
The elevator is a small cell of sadness
in its ascension. It stops with a chippy ping
so out of place when its doors open
to the fifth floor children’s ward:
I glimpse only the bald heads, emaciated
frames of 7-year-olds, & one father’s
swollen, unshaven face, like
illuminations from some forlorn copy of the Inferno,
one monks refused to copy, but no,
this is still Manhattan & the man beside me
no Virgil, just a stranger with the familiar
visage of the bereaved, eyes to the floor.
The flowers seem to wilt in my fist as we rise
to the head & neck ward
where a few patients walk with IV carts in tow,
circling the elevator bay & nurses’ station,
where someone is sobbing behind a drawn curtain,
where my mother has slept these last three nights.

*

Gerry LaFemina is the author of numerous collections of poetry, fiction, and criticism. In 2022 he’ll have two new books released: The Pursuit: A Meditation on Happiness (creative nonfiction) and The American Ruse (poems). He is a Professor of English at Frostburg State University, serves as a mentor in Carlow University’s MFA program, is a Fulbright specialist in Writing and American Culture, and fronts the punk rock band The Downstrokes.