Standards by Sam Sax

Standards

and again the test comes back negative for waterborne parasites

for gonorrhea of the throat and of elsewhere       for white blood cells in the stool

this isn’t always true       sometimes it’s a phone call from your lover

sometimes it’s your computer blinking on with news of what’s wrong

              with your body    this time

simple really       how he says the name of a disease

and suddenly you’re on your back           staring out the window onto a highway

suddenly a woman enters the room       to wrap a black cuff around your arm

and squeeze until you’re no longer sick

to slip a device under your tongue       check in your sweat’s accompanied

by the heat it demanded

and aren’t we all of elsewhere sometimes     the nowhere places you make yourself

inside the hallowed chambers of the hospital    and inside the man’s unsure voice

when he calls and is too scared to name the precise strain of letters

you might share now       what parasite might feed on the topsoil of your groin

what laugh track                   what tabernacle unlatched to let all that god in

what bacteria spreading its legs in your throat      as you speak

when the illness is terminal            you drink an eighth of paint thinner

while all the color drains from your face

all those little rocks in your gut turned to buses    all those buses full of strange men

each     one degree apart        all going somewhere and gone now

funny how a word can do that       garage the body

what if instead he’d simply called to say     epithalamium    or new car    or   sorry