A Provisional Poem by William F Dougherty

[from The Crab Sonnets]

The fatigue is iron. Breath strains like pleas
as morphine slips down lucid tubes to ease
a snarl beneath the silver-staple line
frenzied for each dose of cloaking anodyne
to heal the salvaged gullet-stub, at least,
where the carcinoma had spumed like yeast,
now hovering nurses fret each vital sign
as avenging ache muscles in my mind.

Like Ishmael alone, others I could name
whom assassins of cells seized and maimed
leave me, provisional of wounded time,
their amanuensis armed with only rhyme
to savage for all revenants a page
defying malice with marrow-deep rage.