February 2024
John Dorroh
travelerjd59@gmail.com
Bio Note: I like buying poetry books from presses who have big sales. Do I need more poetry books? Always. But lately I've had to build more shelves, and that is not fun. I find reading several poems aloud each morning to my dog and the birds makes my day run smoother.

Know Thy Physician

1.

To know a physician is to know the best & worst 
of yourself. Fears distilled into a realization 
that your body won’t last forever. That someday 
mere maintenance may not be enough. That the moon
has waxed & waned a million-trillion times & it, too – even 
with its tedious relationship with the sky & seas—sill suck itself
into non-existence. 

2.

To enter into a physician you must carefully choose 
your entrance as how you get in will determine how
you get out. Some never make it either way. But if you 
have the moxie to decipher codes, read body language, & insist 
on more than 5-minute conversations, then you might be
a person to set up a consultation in order to kiss a doctor on the cheek.

3.

To love a physician you should understand they are analyzing 
everything you do & say. How you swim in your dreams, whether
your skin is cracked or creamy, which foot you favor, & if your color’s off. 
They will know your insides better than a private investigator & will not divulge 
the results of their findings without an appointment.

Severance

One of these days I’m gonna eat your autograph
and put the bones on top of the dresser next to the statue
of the lazy possum, the one who refused to run from

danger. One of these days I’m gonna accidentally
drop a scalding hot pot of coffee in the middle of your
clean kitchen floor and call in Chinese food while

you wait. One of these days I’m gonna send you
to the moon, Alice, where you’ll wake up with craters
on both feet, wondering what you did to deserve that.

In all these years we never had a two-way conversation
because you were the sun. I was Pluto which is no longer
a planet, just another periphery, set in space to admire

you, to make you my Queen. Like that’s gonna happen.
The day your gravity went out of commission was a holiday
for me. I lay in bed with hot coffee until 9:30 and listened

to the gibber-jabber of news-atainment, the glossing over 
of wars, the adornment of sports figures who harassed
a lonely possum for failing to pay homage to their likenesses.

Kidney Stones as Fireworks

1.

I vomited comets on Sunday night
into the purple river that wooshes
past our stucco house. When you
reached up to grab one out of my
mouth, a bolt of electricity shot
up your spine and (your dress)
My own zipper was frozen solid,
and there we were like two 
circus freaks, dumbfounded &
mesmerized, not knowing what to do.

2.

I’m shooting kidney stones like some
kind of machine into the commode.
No use in trying to catch them 
for my doctor. They always 
disappear into that little round hole
that empties into the Indian Ocean,
not far from the crocodile-infested bank
 where Kissie Descalpo’s body was drug ashore
 in 1998. Rumor has it that someone pelted her 
in the head with kidney stones & 
I sure hope it wasn’t me.

3.

So there we were on a jet black
August morning, 2 AM, let’s say,
with fog rolling in from the lake.
I can’t breathe, my mantra for the night.
The shower that almost didn’t happen.
But suddenly as if someone had flipped
a switch, meteors began to cover the sky,
not all at once, you understand.
Ice blue ones and red ones, green ones
like burned copper. Gold ones and white
ones like the swans at Millie’s Pond. 
Two collided directly over our heads and a hundred 
mini-trails showered the western sky.
©2024 John Dorroh

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL