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Baked Chicken on Tuesdays
by JoHannah P. Green
Muffled steps on carpet;
rustling cloth on cloth;
smells and sounds stuck in memory;
alcohol, creamed cereal, Betadine;
voices quietly paging the priests of Surgery to the CICU;
the dull clunk and rattle of knives
on the metal altars of Hippocrates.
The altar girls pass the plate-
safety spicing every quarter cup.
(Pretend food.
I’ve seen it before,
served on plastic plates to all my plastic dolls
when I was four.
They did not care if the chicken was plastic, too.)
Official, over-cooked, boiled, baked or steamed
communion wafers
offered up in the name of the god - Longevity..
So healthy for the heart.
Served to the faithful fearful,
pretending
they will live to be a hundred.
But -- ask them.
Ask the hundred-year-old guys if they’re having fun
lifted into their nursing home beds,
or sitting in the wheelchair-parking lot-dining room.
I hear them whisper
waiting for dead friends and relatives,
long gone - beyond the safe life.
Thin, 100-year-old fingers clutch strangers’ arms feebly
imploring,
“Tell my family where I am…”
They measure out their days
waiting for tapioca pudding and
baked chicken on Tuesdays;
anything to spice up
endless days in purgatory.
I should measure out my food
the doctors tell me:
- “lower your triglycerides;
- cut out all the fat;
- count the grams and calories;
- take your pills”
for every twitch and twinge.
“Why?”
I’ve watched the aged faces,
their pleading looks like raw wounds;
forgetting and forgotten;
no longer able
no longer allowed
to find the spice of anger or lust
unable to find
the merciful door of Death.
“Why?”
The covered plate is set before me,
an offering on the altar
of the god of the Golden Years.
I cannot partake. I am a non-believer.
The vile and loathsome wafer of safety will not go
into my mouth, already full
of bitterness, rage, and defiant words.
FLUSH YOUR DAMN OATMEAL!
I want to roar,
Bring me a double bacon-cheeseburger
with chili-fries!
Shakespeare saw the faces and wrote
“For what is the point of so long life?”
Raising a finger at the golden illusion,
I crank up the rock music, stomp on the gas pedal,
and hit the drive-thru.
Time to shake free of the portrait the doctors paint:
Me – at one hundred.
“Why?!”
I will gobble the lovely grease of Life
and die with a wicked, wicked smile.
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