Tuesday Without Appendix
Warm day for walkabout
but Terry’s bundled in sweater, wool hat.
His body feedback is fucked
because on Christmas Day, o sing noël,
Terry felt what he describes as
an oncoming three-cubic-yard fart
that never arrived. Instead came fever,
weird heartbeats, a surgeon like
a teenage girl slicing three holes in Terry’s belly,
mucking around to pull out a ruptured appendix.
She patched a few leaks, pipe and valve repair,
then backfilled the ditch and covered it
with asphalt. No, wait, that comes later.
She sewed the incisions with thread.
Walking the streets of town we pause
so Terry can remove sweater, hat, long johns
because he is smelly with sweat.
All the anesthesia stored itself in his fat cells,
and now it’s pouring out as perspiration,
so Terry strips himself as townsfolk wave
from passing cars and Terry in his undershorts
waves back because everybody knows Terry,
and Terry knows every crusty pipe
that wanders under roads into their houses.
He remembers blockages, geysers,
disasters of mud with Terry at the center
manning a backhoe, a jackhammer. He points
to ghosts of ditches dug, valves replaced,
memories of muck tied up with surgical thread.
No, wait, I mean with giant pipe wrench,
bright red, and these are good memories,
for Terry takes satisfaction. He brings water.
A walk with a friend heals the soul.
At the end Terry, a hugger, tells me
not today—he can’t risk infection.
So he dons sweater and woolen hat,
kick-starts his old Kawasaki and is gone
in a buzz, no hug but no blockage,
no geyser. Flowing freely.
…..
First published in I-70 Review. Thank you editors Maryfrances Wagner, Gary Lechliter, and Greg Field.
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