harpooned man

You lie there on the gurney

puffy

a swollen dirigible

what do they do with it all ?

that syrup of infection

sucked by plastic tubes

and whirring pumps

You are metastasis

I am your son

the child of loading docks

and parking lots

where  shopping carts rust

in last year's snow

and junk mail gyres

in the Arctic wind

the souls of kittens

asleep in the accident glass

their shadows still stiff

by the side of the road.