I
Even at the hour
it came to pass
I saw it written,
partly severed.
A poem.
Even before
the machine,
the hollering.
Help.
I had waited every day for that
moment.
Machine.
Hollering.
Help. & me diving
down to the shop
to the foot
of the stairs
the threshold:
dividing
those years visualizing this
and this hollering now.
Help.
What would I find.
II
ER: I hear him laughing.
I hear the Doc and Aide
laughing too, one-upping—
old woman heaving
chain-saw nearly severed
both wrists.
Ha ha they all rave.
What’s left of the left are
three fingers bleeding.
Still he laughs.
Next to the folded towels,
Surgigut and Tubegauz,
my hand, writes.
Carol Levin’s collections include full volumes, Confident Music Would Fly Us to Paradise (MoonPath Press, 2014) and Stunned By the Velocity (Pecan Grove Press, 2012), as well as chapbooks, Red Rooms and Others (Pecan Grove, 2009) and Sea Lions Sing Scat (Finishing Line Press, 2007). Levin is an editorial assistant for the journal Crab Creek Review.