Posture, by Jenna Le

Interior, by Edgar Degas (b. France), 1868 or 1869.

Posture
  
I knew a man with posture just like this--
loafers spread wide apart, hands casually
shoved in pants pockets, leaning at his ease
against a door. As if he owned the place.
He was a med school student. Unafraid
of sickness, death, his patients, or his bosses,
he’d stand with this relaxed and cocky posture
amid the I.C.U.’s tube-tangled beds
and rattle off the latest blood-test findings
in a loud, bored voice. One irked attending
commented, “A guy who stands like that
is bound to be a surgeon.” Maybe not bad,
but careless. When a patient’s health got worse
from a mistake he made, he blamed a nurse.

Jenna Le

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Anchor & Plume Press, 2016). Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations appear or are forthcoming in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Best of the Raintown Review, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. Her website is http://jennalewriting.com/