In Madras, threadworms crawl out at night
on hospital sheets glazed dun with washing.
They wriggle in the middle
of rumpled starch-stained cotton,
barely visible punctuations
to unread chapters of overwritten lives.
Morning light discovers old men furled
fever-heated, anopheles-shivered,
in bedless pockets of a gorged ward;
dreaming a womb's caress of the cold stone floor,
warmed by thoughts of noon
and the trays with lentil soup.
At three in the humid afternoon,
the Injection O.P. is full. A curving brown ribbon
twirls out its double doors;
goose-stepped rows of nude upper arms,
sacrificial lambs bereft of all fat,
awaiting the painful benediction of vitamin stabs.
Mycotic ulcers soothe with the sundown
Indian Ocean breaths, that sough soft
as mother's kiss on abraded knee,
through British-built hallways, over parallax pallets.
Families knot, around beds hard with waiting;
Tiffin carriers packed with rasam-rice and hope.
White coat over sari, nine p.m. rounds;
she brands his chest with her stethoscope
-endpiece warmed with her breath,
to thaw cold lungs, condemned to death
by mycobacter.
Her Tamil is stilted,
the mother tongue stumbles,
unable to grant a stay of execution.
Her patient coughs blood; in between hacks
he mocks her accent,
convent-English wrought.
She smiles touching him, what she lacks
in language, translated through her hand-
You are my fellow man.
In Los Angeles, sunsets dim from yellowbrown veils
that hang heavy over mountaintops
and festoon arterial walls
of good and bad guys alike.
Rayon-suited businessmen too rushed for life,
lend Hollywood adjectives to myocardial infarcts.
Van Gogh irises bloom on dawn-painted walls
of equipment-rich hospitals-
and wither in the eyes of anorexic angels.
Across, in the mall, the stores are thronged
with birds of paradise in apparent full bloom-
dying slow inside from the need to belong.
Pacific sun laves afternoon gold-
and melanomas-on Caucasian skin.
The beaches are full. From under the piers
young men are ambulanced, heroin cramped.
She puts away Parasitology: A Textbook, by Chatterjee;
searches for needle tracks on arms without veins.
Mrs. Smith at the nursing home begs her to stay,
meet her grown children-visiting hour is here.
They rock in the lobby, few families near;
Far off, a bell knells, no offspring today.
Mrs. Smith takes a long time to sleep that night.
She wishes she had brought a tiffin carrier.
White coat over skirt, night E.R. call;
The bag lady mutters, empty space
where her front teeth should be;
points to her legs. The patient sees
double-progress note from a year before.
Her English is clipped,
the second language trips,
hesitant to voice fears of multiple sclerosis.
"Garn" says the bag lady, her hisses
loud for the E.R. to hear,
"You ain't nevah hearda charley horses?"
She smiles touching her, what she misses
in idiom, translated through her hand-
You are my fellow man.
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