Sample Poems by Serena Fox

The Angio

My father lies at the end of my white coat,
witnessing his own angiography. He jokes,
winces occasionally. The techs are reading
Malcolm X. Two vein grafts are

occluded. The internal mammary artery graft
looks good in many different projections. In
this decade, we are redirected towards the
mammary, for our hearts’ blood. It

strikes me that my father has no grandchildren.
A patient of mine had his coronaries done for the
third time with a graft from his gastric artery.
Truly, the way to a man’s heart...

ha ha... We have bitten of the heart and the
heart is The Tree. The serpent recoils post-op.
Not one of us is ready for the next exposure.
I did not want to

bring him here, because I did not want him to
know how easily he fits into my pocket, and
to what lengths I’ll go to keep him there. My
father observed the

autopsy of his father, who walked around Miami
for a week with a massive coronary occlusion,
and he can— my fingers at his temples,
holding all I ever need

to be— watch steadily as the
dye, serpentine, drips
down the screen.

Grandbaby Doe

How you suffer me to die.
And oh my God how you
Suffer me to live!
Don’t I know the flies know!
There one fusses on my lip,
My cracked, reptilian tongue,
Your ‘dotted Q’.
Who dares censure eighty years? Ties me to my bed?
You, who are too young and self absorbed
To even guess what fierceness
Keeps me fossilized, mid-air?
Will no one put a pillow to my head?
What freedom, liberty.
There is no place to shit
But on white sheets.
Some young whip has got to clean it up!
Almost has a smell.
Voices skin me, effortless,
Wipe and plan adventures after work.
Sign me out.
Same custodial mode.
What shift is this?
What season is it now?
I’ll gum this nose tube out!
I’ll pith you with an eye!
My butt is clean.
You’re slithering out the door.
Blue dribble withers on my chin
And my blue manhood.

I Want You In A Suit

There is no end to it
Pacifying anyone who
Demands a suck or cure.
Insurance pays for E.R. visits.

I can swim.
I can fix you while you wait.
The bottom of the tank.
Twenty rectals in a day.

CPR you out of the
Ocean of Heaven.
Puked, shat, peed, and
Spat on, I reel in

Twenty bodies in a day,
Organs plus-or-minus,
Appendages of all shapes,
Sizes, locations, prostheses.

I want you in a suit!

Socks, underwear, shirt,
Jacket, tie—the works.
I want to love you, slowly,
Through your pants.

I want your knees and my knees
to meet underwater. I want to suck
Cuff-links. I won’t send you to
The lab. I don’t want everyone

To know you. I am further than
You think. Not everyone is
Hooked on revelation, nor
Aspires to gels

Jackie’s Night

A dim lamp orb
Night summer falling
Jackie hums to Tamar
At her breast
In the room that Richard built
Beyond the whirr of the fan
The round glow weights my lids
Steamrolled into the floor
I disengage
There is only Jackie
With a torque of light
On her neck
Breathing and
Rocking