Diagnosis and Then

Diagnosis and Then Carol Dorf (bio) The x-ray tech wrapped her arms around me to stop the shaking Harshly lit windowless room in the basement / the better to cure you with I had been sick for weeks / fever and coughing / cancelled classes Days on the sofa reading novels I had read before Time fled with the opening and closing of shades / sunset a promise Once my orange Honda / stranded me on the freeway / glass / butts / rubber fragments Shaking / I could not hold breath inside my lungs / for the x-ray Like a mother / I thought / though I was close to thirty Thousands of miles from my own lost / mother Who was probably driving somewhere in her white Dodge Dart The x-ray must have happened / I can't remember that moment Antibiotics / cocktail of meds / and then I could breathe A gift I had never learned / to measure More than thirty years / a woman I saw once / temporary mother / healer End Page 82 Carol Dorf Carol Dorf is a Zoeglossia fellow, whose books include Theory-Headed Dragon. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, and in the journals that include About Place, Cutthroat, The Museum of Americana, Exposition Review, Unlikely Stories, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, and Maintenant. They are founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, and taught math in Berkeley. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press