fractures your vision
into a kaleidoscope of double everything
including a panic attack at the ER
as a nurse whisks you in a wheelchair
down the hallway calling, “Stroke Alert!”
the whole thing so fricking
surreal you will wonder
if this is what it’s like to die.
One minute you’re watching Sponge Bob
with your granddaughter and the next,
you’re inside a machine that thrums, clangs,
bangs like a badass electric guitar solo
or holds you like a hug gone terribly wrong
and you will call on your dead
son, your dead dad, your dead friend Jamelle,
and all your dead dogs, and say, “hey,
is this how it goes down?”
And when a doctor tries to scare
you into staying overnight
for a full cardiology workup,
you will say, “There are things worse than dying.”
And so, no, not a stroke,
but rather the body’s warning
to chill out.
Find a way to extricate from the stress.
Unhook the nest of plastic tubes,
the blood pressure cuff, the I.V. port,
sign the leaving-against-medical-advice paperwork,
put back on your yoga pants, your tee-shirt,
tie your turquoise and purple Keens,
(heed your body’s warning, heed your body’s warning),
go home and write it out into a poem.
Susan Vespoli lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she relies on the power of writing to stay sane. Her poems have been published in Rattle, Gyroscope Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Mom Egg Review, New Verse News, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, and other cool spots. She is the author of two books, Blame It on the Serpent (Finishing Line Press, Jan. 2022) and Cactus as Bad Boy (Kelsay Books, July 2022).