Tuesday Without Appendix

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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@joecottonwood