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Edited on Thu Nov-15-07 06:05 PM by BlueIris
"Shots"
Three nurses to hold him, this four-year-old who kicks me crazy in the belly—six months pregnant but ha! I've got the needle—the Measles-Mumps-Rubella. Child, it stings like hell.
Listen to me, my little immunized enemy— I'll take a bruise from you before I'll see another kid like the one carried through the clinic doors at the end of shift in his father's arms, seizing seizing The father's shirt is black with sweat is praying in Mexican
grand mal, I try to get a line in, Mother of God, intractable Get him over to St. Luke's
but in the ambulance, he codes, and then, in the ER with the furious swirl of personelle, crash cart rumbling up, curtains snatched to shield him from the drive-bys and the drunks, the boy expired. Measles encephalitis. He never got his shots.
So walk out, dark blonde, into the sun that will scald you red and bleach your hair to tungsten burning, drive the dusty valley smacked with irrigated fields. Bad counterfeit. Too green.
His young bones green, unripe, gronjo, from the old Teutonic root— Green. Untrained. Green. Freshly killed. His young bones green and full of marrow.
Green at work there in the rows, hands stretched out to pick a beefsteak tomato at the end of season when they strip the plants clean whether the fruit is ripe or not.
—Belle Waring
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