"Necropsy"

my father opens up his body

into a morgue      says it's the

safest way to unmake a faulty

body & name it an overpopu-

lated community of silence—

cold penance

i’m doctoring: everything strokes him into

ischemic island   & when God ignores the

works of his hands      blood becomes

a terrible enjambment that runs into

streams of sugar until a man's bladder

becomes a flooded crater at the mercy of

an infirmary

i saw how my father betrayed

his hospital bed the moment

the seventh patient beside him

died

he returned home with his pallid body

as a relief camp   unworthy to be

called a miracle

but who will out of culture

trust the earth enough to throw

an open invitation to the grave

during a feast    when the grave

itself is a greedy glutton?

who?           who?

i still fear     i fear that when next it

rains heavily & the earth tricks him

into a pot-bellied river     his banks

may become a popular drunk

& i don't trust the longevity of such

gift— chaos

he says to me:

son   sometimes we look so

skimpy after the torture from

death    other times we

plumage vigour when the sun’s

rays hit us in the right places

in all   always walk away from the

turf drinking you into a surge

i shaved my tongue into a padre

& performed a benediction of

survival on his behalf  & i hope

the incense from this liturgy clears

up the flood in his body

"Opportunity Cost"

In the life before I was fleshed,

             my family, too, had settled all the

                 debts we owed diabetes without

                                     auctioning a life.

            We cleared it

down to the last dime it ever

               loaned our future without

                                   pausing a breath.

        Centuries

before I was born, I earned

                  32 golden canines without killing

                             laughter for my genome,

& my genes did not have to

            pull bloody humour out of my

                 robust glucose level, in honour of

                                  any immolated insulin.

We paid the bills across

          our family tree, bypassed

the chains of carbohydrates without

                   skipping a tax. The cloud envied

       the life that greened across

my family tree before we were all sent down

                   to witness the deficit of

                              the earth, all of us burdened with

the history of blood that trails

          every of our sugar surge with

             a heavy fine. My grandparents

                    went first, to appeal the demand of

cloud in our blood but never

            returned. My uncle, too, grew into

                   a river to protest the heaviness of the

                          sugary water that erodes our bladder.

                            Now, I watch my father rehearse

                                      survival every day from the

                                         germline of a beautiful damned

                                              catastrophe; the way he struggles

                                                  to hold back the river threatening

                                           to overflow his bladder. My eyes dip

                         into his knees to fetch invocations for him

                  & for those of us who are next in the line.

               Today, I forego the redness of beef

            the dividends of chocolate & soda

    for a brief bottle of insulin;

my father needs it most.