from my unpublished collection
This is in the ER, I’m in the room next door to someone who’s been shot. The doctor needs to get consent, but this guy’s suspicious, he’s not on board. If we don’t take the bullet out, you could lose the use of your arm, the doctor tells him, and this guy wants to know one thing: would he get disability. The cops are laughing, the doctor’s pissed. It could travel to your heart. You could die. The guy is silent. The doctor wants to leave him there, but he's afraid of getting sued. All of us are feeling tidal pressures, the tectonic push and pull that warps the earth’s brittle crust above its molten core, disappointment, desperation, boredom, fear, the seafloor spreading. Gondwana and Laurasia, that ocean’s getting deep, the have-nots and the haves are pulling further and further apart. I’m here because I slipped a disc, I sit in a cube all day, so I’m not unsympathetic. But still.
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First published in AGNI
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
