John R. Reed
SWITCH
Suddenly I'm on the losing side with
those disheveled troops in styrofoam slippers
and unironed robes whose keepers wheel them
to
be
hefted like beef onto the butcher's
block. Tests before the cadaver's final
trial.
Probed and poked in my feverish bed I
feel like kneaded dough rising to an un-
wholesome loaf. The doctor makes the curtain sing
on its rail to ring in our inverse show
where I'm the prisoner telling yet once more
the litde that he knows, as though that will
change his interrogators' minds and let him
go, as though there were no war marching up
and down the halls sore hungry to be fed.
Laurel Trivelpiece
POLONIUS REVISITED
More to carry, less to take -
your hands get full of that,
and you notice certain truths
are sticky on the
ton~e.
You find, like d1e bird,
you must beat the wings off
your butterfly before swallowing.
But some foolish assumptions
sink away in the gravel,
so much sump water.
