Sample Poems:"The Quick and the Dead"

Prescription

Roxicet, PRN, 10 mgs every four hours for pain

By now you know I need you.
The others have nothing on you. Nothing.
Not Zoloft with her ample breasts
and love of disarray.
Not Dilautin, who pins my wrists
and comes quick.
Surely not Cortef, Mr. Cocksure,
who makes my head swell.

You knew you had me
when I took you to that restaurant
in a heavy downpour, leaned over clotted candles
with my matted hair and blue fingers,
and tried to make a clean break.
As if I could turn my back on you--
You, the only light left
except for the top of my drink.

For crying out loud! I can resist you
about as much as butter
against sharp knife.
Hurry, my blue-eyed boy.
We’ve got four hours and forever.
My mother says do as I say and not as I do.
You say do everything and then tell about it.

Pain

The surgeon has done all he can and the beautiful
people on the wall-mounted T.V.
smile down on me.

When the pain returns, it is slow, insidious. Intimate, even.

It wants me.
It wants my skin.
It wants my breath.
It enters the red silk lining that runs the length of my torso
and closes its fist.

The nurse covers me in snow
white blankets
and checks my pulse.

  Website of Elizabeth Harrington, Ph.D. Poet, Blogger, Non-Fiction Writer

HRA, Harrington Research Associates Website