In the Radiology Waiting Room, by Suzanne E. Edison

Art by Peggy Vanbianchi (USA). Contemporary. Thanks to Harborview Medical Center for permission to use artworks.

In the Radiology Waiting Room
 
I investigate the insides
of plexi-glass boxes hanging on the walls.
 
Animal guts are stretched to look like skin:
a book, a boat, a map,
 
and a pair of painted blue and gold, molded
hollow hands. Surgical gloves?
 
All of them shaped from former sheep.
No patients in the waiting room look up;
 
their heads bend to screens
or last month’s magazines. X-rays
 
may offer hope. A woman hunched
in her wheelchair eyes me sideways
 
as I photograph and scribble
notes hidden in the glove’s wrinkled palms.
 
A few inked entreaties--lend a hand, my time
is at hand--I think: In case of emergency,
 
break glass. Grab the gloves, crack
the wall of dull air, the patient
 
silence, slip them onto my hands.
Touch the woman waiting.

Suzanne E. Edison

Suzanne's work appears, among other places, in: her chapbook, The Moth Eaten World, Finishing Line Press, 2014; Spillway; Crab Creek Review; The Healing Art of Writing, Vol. 1; The Examined Life Journal; Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism and Awakening, and www.literarymama.com.

Art by Peggy Vanbianchi (USA). Contemporary.