Doctor Henry Heimlich – I

(with Zachary Schomburg)

This is a true story: Doctor Henry Heimlich is still alive! But Doctor Henry Heimlich is sad. Doctor Henry Heimlich is still a scientist too. Best known for the maneuver that saves chocking lives, now he is the newest of the new avant-garde. Doctor Henry Heimlich’s thesis: if you inject an ill body with malaria, it will heal. Specifically, malaria will behead cancer, Lyme’s disease, and even AIDS. The conclusion: the scientific community laughed first, then they wanted him terminated, stripped of the title scientist. The Red Cross stopped calling it the Heimlich Maneuver, opting instead for abdominal thrusts, his name properly erased, as if from shadowy curse of memory. Some days, when he is especially sad, he just goes home and rides his horse, a horse is a horse, of —

Doctor Henry Heimlich – II

(with Ben Loory)

You take tweezers to his open mouth. His noxious breath pivots around your face: you want to squeeze his pores. You lose contact with the tweezers, let the metal fall into the refuse of his intestines. You do not want to save him, but regardless, you gather your arms around his waist, push up against his ribs, you do not save him no matter how hard you thrust your fists against his sternum. You are maybe doing it wrong. You are maybe doing it right. He is choking. He is dying. This is your fault. You reach your palm into his throat and your arm is coated with slime. You withdraw, try again. You reach in with the whole of your determination. His death will not be your fault. You gather his organs around your wrist. From his belly, you extract not improperly chewed food but — a snake!

Waiting at the Bus Stop

(from Amy King)

We wait at the mouth of the bus stop while other people requiem. The bus passes us by without stopping. And we wait beneath a sky filled with nowhere to go. I place a grass crown against your temples to distance your grace.