Tag: poems/poetry

Rachel Hadas

One: secretarial computer screen:
appointments, cancellations. Two: machine

we’re here for, registering your heart’s each pump
with grainy images that throb and jump

in sync with the obscure interior.
Three: anticlimactic VCR

screen, a tiny, garish old cartoon
squawking and jerking in the darkened room.

Past these respective renderings of vision
we move next door. Here the examination

is palpable, is stethoscope to chest:
breath in, out, raise your arms, stand, squat, and rest.

I’m sitting, staring vaguely at the sky–
from the ninth floor, a pale blue vacancy.

What is a window but another frame
or screen through which to ponder–is it time

or space that peels this dull facade to show
the poverty of what we really know

despite the