Health Care

As part of our nation’s plan to provide affordable, accessible health care for all, we are going back to grassroots tactics. We suggest that more people take their health care into their own hands. For instance, in case of accident or dismemberment, we strongly encourage those involved to be resourceful in the aftermath. If a pedestrian is hit by a car and they can still walk afterwards, it is advisable to knock on the doors of all the surrounding houses and ask if there are any retired doctors who wouldn’t mind taking a look at them. If the person cannot walk, it is advised that they get a ride to the nearest hospital, either by taxi, bus, or car. Please avoid calling the ambulance service in these situations, or you will be heavily penalized.

Popular opinion has long mandated that people avoid performing minor surgeries on themselves and others. That old-fashioned idea has run its course, and we are now recommending that minor surgeries for external cuts, gashes, and wounds be carried out in a well-lit room, preferably quiet, with properly sterilized sewing needles and thread and any other tools you may find useful. We recommend you be patient but persistent. The speechwriter, for example, just attempted to remove some glass shards that became embedded in his or her arm. The speechwriter lit a match, waved a needle through its flame, went into the bathroom and poked at the arm through blurred vision. This removed most of the glass pieces, but there are still some small ones that the speechwriter will patiently and persistently poke at throughout the writing of this speech.

In case of births we are now implementing a system whereby the pregnant person must reserve a hospital room no later than two months before the delivery date. Should the baby want to be born earlier than the delivery date, we recommend ingesting heavy drugs (available at the post office) to delay labor. If those do not work, we are in the process of building an emergency birth center only an hour’s drive away. Should most of the delivery date pass with no birth, we recommend inducing labor in our facilities. Try not to wait until too late in the day as the paperwork required to reserve a birth room for more than 24 hours is quite mountainous.

For aches and pains we suggest ignoring them as much as possible and hoping that they go away. Hope is as strong a medicine as medicine, in some cases. If hope does not work, we also suggest laughter, smiles, and hugs.

For more serious cases please continue using red tape, hoops, large bills, and chains attached to desks.

It is advised to wear a helmet at all times.

Our new slogan, “The body can do it, the mind can do it, you can do it,” is aimed to remind people of the resiliency of the human body. Medicine has only been practiced for the last 5,000 or so years, while people have been around for much longer. If we embrace this natural approach and let the body take care of itself, or take care of itself with a little help from you and your neighbors, we are confident that people’s health everywhere will improve.

Sonnet 4.5

When in the mirror a newborn face I see
I put not onefold faith in those shining eyes.
In columns three have I built my legacy:
World’s work and love’s labors stacked to sloppy highs;
One with false starts, one with savory losses--
When womb asleep and heart laced unfettered.
The patina of these two outglosses
The third, whose unmarked brightness is tethered
To abdomen, then to ancestral past,
Housing ghosted fragments of yesterday,
Part but apart, it’s him he must make last,
As I must bid self-love beckon my stay.
Posterity passes life’s energy,
But threefold lives my memory and me.

Some Metal

I. Bed

Some metal
prevents my bending.
Not as comfortable as my own heart beating.
Not as strange as my own lips clenching.


II. Floor

Metal in a plastic bag
next to the bedside
shifts inside the green plastic house
when I kick it.

III. House

Plaster walls bulge with
no metal reinforcements to prevent the swelling
or the downward cracks
with ants trailing out.
The metal is all outside:
The appliances, the tables, the shower doors, the beds
are all shaking and falling apart,
dropping pieces for me to pick up
and hand over to the next in line.

Mirrored

The reversion is my norm
The asymmetrical reversed asymmetrically
Shadow play foolery
Mosquito neck apparent
Eye contact indirect
Conversation diluted due to
Words and faces backward
Some meaning lost

What is there is enough

My Grandmother's Words

Over the phone my grandmother asked if I had any boyfriends.

"No," I said. "I've just been dating."

"That's good. Concentrate on yourself. I remember one night when my friend and I were taking the trolley from West L.A. to East L.A. Going through all the neighborhoods. It was always fun to do that. There were the whites, then the Russians, then the Mexicans. Everyone went to where their language was, you know. I told my friend how I was tired of dating these alcoholics. I don't want to clean up anyone's vomit! I said. We had to take two or three trolleys to get to East L.A. We were going to a dinner. And that's where I met Joe. He had come back from the war and was living at his aunt's house so he could go to college. His aunt was a mean old thing and didn't approve of him going to school. So she wouldn't let him in the house. He had to stay in the garage. After we started dating, and I knew he was going to call me the Saturday after we met, I asked him why doesn't he get an apartment of his own. I told him he was going to catch pneumonia in that garage. Eventually he did get his own place. On 8^th and Slauson. He had twelve cousins who all lived in East L.A. The oldest cousin was a boxer. As he got older he got punchy, from getting hit so much. He wasn't right in the head. He had a good pension and would ride around in a limousine. He would take all the cousins shopping and buy clothes for them. The same shirt in twelve sizes. Later on, though, he killed his neighbor. He shot his neighbor and the neighbor died, and then the cousin was put away. He tried to attack Joe once, too. Joe was taking psychology classes at college, and his cousin began to suspect that Joe knew things about him because of the classes. So one day the cousin got into Joe's apartment when he was out, and he sat there waiting for him. When Joe got home, though, he was able to talk the cousin out of doing anything to him. You would have liked your grandfather."

East Los Angeles. 1940s. 8^th and Slauson. I would have liked my grandfather. My grandfather died of lung cancer, but not just any kind of lung cancer. It was certified government lung cancer. He was exposed to radiation during the war--exposed on purpose, for testing reasons. My grandmother was left to raise six daughters. She didn't bring her babies to family gatherings where the boxer cousin was.

Though unrelated by blood, my father is like my maternal grandfather. They are alike because they are linked through my mother. And I am my grandmother on that trolley, declaring to refuse to date any drunks, declaring to refuse anything less than a wonderful man.

Once we are immersed in a thing, it becomes us, and we become it. It's not that we like it, it's that it becomes all we know. If you are walking down a street, and there is a cool wind, and there are people and cars and objects that you must dodge, that is all you know. My grandfather was shot in the back of his head during the war. The bullet did not penetrate the skin. It bounced off, leaving an indentation that my mother used to feel with her fingers. When you feel something like that, in that moment, how can you know anything else?

Fickle Castle

From my bedroom window there is a view of a palace. Every night as I get under the covers of my bed, I look at the palace. It is bathed in a yellowy light, and usually there is fog or mist moving around it. The other night, as I was getting under the covers on top of my bed, I looked out my window to look at the glowing palace. It wasn't there. I looked closer. I thought maybe the fog was too thick. It covered up the palace. But there was no yellow glowing fog where the palace should be. I thought maybe the lights were out. I looked even closer and all I saw were very dark green trees, dark sky, dark houses, and a no-palace hole where the palace is supposed to be.

I do not know where the palace went that night. Perhaps it was camouflaged. Perhaps it was lifted up by the fog. It upset my nightly routine, and may have even disturbed my dreams. I do not recall. Here is the change: Every night as I get undercover in my bed, I lean far to the left and look out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the castle but I know it may have better things to do.