This poem is published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
 

Pain Clinic

The patient, recidivist to treatment,
stoic but not quite spartan,
prepped and stretched
on the therapeutic torture table
to gladly accept the pain that,
it is said by the adepts,
can cancel out his pain,

emits
despite gulped breath
and gritted teeth
grunts against initial probing,
and then, third injection piercing bull’s-eye,
lets go a loud groan
not expressed: pressed out.

Theirs the experiment,
his the experience:
To whom, at any rate,
would I call out, here amongst
the touters of cure,
pals of the palliative,
legatees of the leech?

He apologizes, not that he could
disappoint those attending,
who hold no expectation of him,
but by his terse sorry
to own to the shame
that shows
he expected more of himself,

and is caught offguard
when the doctor accepts:
Next door there’s a new patient
he hopes has not heard.
The poor guy, it is implied,
might be warned off.
All must keep quiet to keep hope.
 

Severities

1

I am what you are riddled with,
when you are riddled,
the flowering of your greatest depth.

I make you turn toward me,
make you close your eyes, the better to see me,
so you see only me, who cannot be seen.

Though I make you think
you have abided too long in the light,
still I prove you to yourself:

You know no one else can place me,
until you let them know.
And yet I care no more for you

than the moss for the wall. I want
to be myself, now and now and now
endlessly, and yet seem to be you.

If I can be deadened, do not be fooled.
Who, after all, am I?
Only to heal is to solve me.

2

What clues them in,
I’m never aware of.
I can be walking along,
someone who knows me will say,
I can tell: it’s bad today.

Hitch in the step,
lean, lurch, or limp,
It’s subtle. I hadn’t known myself,
but when I’m made to mind it,
there it is: they’re right.

I know it real
outside in.

James Toupin, retired general counsel of the US Patent and Trademark Office, has published poems widely in journals and anthologies, including in Pleiades, Nimrod and Beloit Poetry Journal. His first book of poems, Upon the Century Called American, appeared in 2024 from Main Street Rag Press. He is also a published translator, of Selected Letters of Alexis de Tocqueville on Politics and Society, and writer on legal topics.

Featured image in this post is, “Diseases of the hip, knee, and ankle joints and their treatment by a new and efficient method”, 1875, by Hugh Owen Thomas, licensed public domain via Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School via wikimedia commons.