At the Sisters of Charity
It’s New Year's Eve and the people with dementia
are grooving to Thelonious Monk. A blind man
standing next to me, eyes sunk into his head,
boogies so recklessly I push the tables away
to keep him from harm. Even after led to safety
he raps his cane frantically in parallel sixth.
The feeble, the lame, circling the drain,
heads dozing on tables, others swaying
in their wheel chairs, the room reeks
of urine so badly I consider calling maintenance.
It's as if all the rejected of the world
were corralled into one room and I, their nurse,
wandered in with them, feeling like a fraud,
an imposter in a lab coat. Monk’s riffs rattle
from inside the bathroom stall as I wipe diarrhea
off a patient’s buttocks, gripping my waist
and hovering over the john. He must have been
a holy man I think, as if in some rural juke joint,
his handiwork hammering, ascending chords
a refuge from the funk, Hallelujah man
and thank you for the ladder. I am out.
It’s New Year's Eve and the people with dementia
are grooving to Thelonious Monk. A blind man
standing next to me, eyes sunk into his head,
boogies so recklessly I push the tables away
to keep him from harm. Even after led to safety
he raps his cane frantically in parallel sixth.
The feeble, the lame, circling the drain,
heads dozing on tables, others swaying
in their wheel chairs, the room reeks
of urine so badly I consider calling maintenance.
It's as if all the rejected of the world
were corralled into one room and I, their nurse,
wandered in with them, feeling like a fraud,
an imposter in a lab coat. Monk’s riffs rattle
from inside the bathroom stall as I wipe diarrhea
off a patient’s buttocks, gripping my waist
and hovering over the john. He must have been
a holy man I think, as if in some rural juke joint,
his handiwork hammering, ascending chords
a refuge from the funk, Hallelujah man
and thank you for the ladder. I am out.