Failure

    by Risa Denenberg

He’s in the hospital again

failure heaped upon failure—heart, lungs, kidneys

and now they’re crunching his breast bone with

plangent thumps while she stands apart.

I have forgotten ATP and the Kreb’s cycle, the cortical axes,

even the number of bones in the human body.

But doctors—they know nothing about the small body inside

the carapace that sickens and dies while they pound.

© 2012 Risa Denenberg

Risa Denenberg is an aging hippy currently living in Tacoma, WA. She earns her keep as a nurse practitioner and has worked in end-of-life care for many years. She is drawn to exploring themes of suffering and death and their intersections with religion, medicine, and art. Recent poems have appeared online at Sein und Werden, The Yale Journal of the Humanities in Medicine, YB, Lily, and Escape into Life.

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