MEDICAL ASSOCIATES

Third time in two months, seeing the
third different doctor in the Medical Group,
America’s form of socialized medicine.
You don’t know me, but at least you accept my insurance.

A giant man in a dark jogging suit enters
with his painted up wife in a rabbit fur coat
and high heeled boots, working her gum
while her poor husband sweats profusely,
partially from illness, but more over his
worrying if they take a credit card or not.
His plan B is to write a check, get back to work,
make some money and then deposit some cash.

A man named Michael, in his eighties says
he doesn’t need to sign in, because “you know me”
and he sits with us all waiting to hear his name called
and the room number where he will be shelved
until the next available doctor grabs a manila folder.

Another man has a corpse-like appearance as if
recently fallen from a moving vehicle, scraped and cut.
His pale white skin sloughs off his head like a vampire
who’s been caught out of the casket on a sunny afternoon.
The news for him is not so good, rescue squad workers,
two cops summoned to go to his examination room.
Soon they all walk out together, a transport to hospital.

An hour for my cough and congestion,
I see a three ring circus, the most peculiar
act of all, a fifty-five year old man bringing
his mother to the doctors once again.
She asks for a cup of water, twice.
Then a third time, he is so patient.
They discuss her new apartment,
It is well kept, I’m socializing more.
He disagrees, wants to speak of it later.

She's loud,belligerent,and belches.
He encourages her not to gulp.
She says she’ll go outside and drink.
She wants gum. Spearmint gum.
The green kind. Extra.
She asks for candy. Something with sugar.
Later he replies.

He can’t take it anymore. He asks,
“Why are you so arrogant?”
All the while, I thought the man
was a saint, how did he do it?
How could he handle all the
aggravation and demands?
How'd he put up with it so long?

When I’m finally called to my little space
for the quick once over by the nurse-
pulse, blood pressure, temperature, small talk.
I wait to meet the doctor, like a baseball player
that I root for, a much younger man than me.

I study the detailed chart of the digestive system
recognizing the organs from fourth grade health,
realizing for the first time how big the colon really is
with its three parts- ascending, transverse,descending.
No wonder people end up dying from colon cancer.

It is then that I hear through the paper thin
walls of the examination rooms, the mother and
son arguing, the man has turned back into a boy
by tattle tailing on his mother who has not been
taking her antibiotic pills the way she is supposed to.