April Freely

 
 
 

Wait #3

 

In the room where I get seen, I feel:
This is hard to watch. 

I check the NP’s statements against what my body knows under its own authority,
like every monster.

She has me standing in a corner to give myself an exam she will say I’ve declined,
according to the Summary of Visit I’ll receive later.

I see the dark and the threat. The iron in my blood is lit
on day two.

 
 

Hysteria

 

is like the panicle of the hydrangea
        a shift in expression, or color
alkaline soil, acid light
        like Homer’s wine-dark sea
where the red is bitter

“Let’s just keep an eye on this.”

 But I want you to verify that.
 


                                                                    women over sixty-five, at the ER
                                                            with heart attacks are still
                                                                    most often told anxiety
                                                            is what ails them
 

my mother’s real pain
        was mistaken for a live, warm
and foreign source, in the video
        for the heart association
where she tells her story:
        one doctor walking the hall
saw a lasso of light
        move across her face
like bioluminescence
        before he called out
for the crash cart
 

            +
 

these days, I jump
        at the slightest sound
that isn’t a bullet, isn’t
        a threat, a rope, a pathogen
it’s a phone, it’s a bag of skittles
        it’s loose cigarettes, it’s chronic
I’ve stopped telling the doctors

“If you continue to have trouble
which I don’t think you will
you can make another appointment”

 How about you put yourself in my shoes for a moment.
 


                                                                    women who are not taken seriously
                                                            when they express anger, are not taken
                                                                    seriously when they express pain
 

I stress, I hysteria
        if my allergen is stress itself, then
my body also treats no indictments
        as evidence of a dangerous invader
my body is not wrong

“We don’t know what causes this.”

When we came to your office, before
they said, "don't worry about it."
 


                                                                    for tachycardia
                                                            press on the lid-dark eyes
                                                                    set the body in sea water
                                                            but sensory deprivation for all
                                                                    my feeling would be expensive
 

the prescription is in
        my mouth, dentata, dentata
this body, this cinema
        a throat black with ink
the blue black of decaying
        material, intense black, stiff
black, blue black, cool black
        magic, sidekick, mammy
 

            +
 

Ma, is my resilience less
        now than the strength
of all mothers before me?

“Are you tolerating that a little better?”

I’m telling you something’s not right.
 


                                                                    certain autoimmune diseases now
                                                            occur in populations of black women
                                                                    at a rate three to four times higher…
 

though my inheritance in America
        is to seem without feeling
though my humanity
        is a further derivation
of the HeLa line, aren’t we all
        the scapegoat body that furthers
the science, in this home
        all my jane crow era
mothers have paid for?

“We’ll see you again for follow-up in six weeks.”

I think you said you wanted to take some blood before I go.
 

 
                                                                    a nursing textbook in 2017
                                                            counsels us: blacks often report higher pain
                                                                    intensity than other cultures; they believe
                                                            suffering and pain are inevitable
 

in this America
        my other body is the mule
the pile driver, a steady
        transducer, as residual trauma
works across generations
        through the genes, they say
 

            +
 

I’d been walking around feeling real
        but in the medical narrative, I know
I have to say the right words
        to get credit for my pain
when every wireless telegraphy
        is ruinous, the physician
must guess the depth

You want me to wait here, or should I come back another day?

 
 

 

April Freely's work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Ninth
Letter, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and
awards from Cave Canem, the Ohio Arts Council, Vermont Studio
Center, Tulsa Artist Fellowship and Provincetown Fine Arts Work
Center. She currently serves as the Nonfiction Editor at Washington
Square Review.