“I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery.”
Woody Allen through Annie Hall’s Alvy Singer

Burned out on Baaahston medical internship,
pregnant with our first, like nit-wits we vaca’d
in Haiti where I got sick as a blood tick gorging
on paradisal mangos Adam’s tree dropped on me.

And to top that off both of us drank god-knows
voodoo potions chocked with reptilian fetuses
in tarantula goop during ceremonies we attended
as guests of a native couple (she also with child).

He had rescued moi from their dictator’s frowning
Tonton Macoute Pretorian Guard on Port au Prince’s
public square where idiot which I was jokingly saluted
Papa Doc Duvalier’s humungous Big Brother statue.

After barely surviving our pension’s witch doctor
whom I resisted with Herculean effort injecting a dirty
syringe’s neomycin in one buttock as AIDs took off —
tile floor/ porcelain toilet kept my head from burning up.

As planned, we proceeded to Pt. Reyes National Seashore
to live in a town which strictly speaking lacked a town:
somewhat crabbily, like hermits, she gestated Baby Zoe;
I chopped wood when not $laving in Marin Country jails.

# # #

Gerard Sarnat is a physician who’s built and staffed homeless clinics as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. He won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry has authored the following collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016).

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