An Inevitable Thing

Then it was Christmas Eve and at the doctor’s
they longed to be rid of me;
ushered through a sticky Sydney road clinic by a coat
with tie stains and errant nose hair,
it had always been “we’d better keep an eye on that,” but
with lashings of blood at my temples,
and Tie-Stain’s furious keyboard taps –

Then it was April and at radiology with
suffocatingly buzzy expectants,
“is it a boy?” I ask the coffee-sipper,
stabbing me with a turkey baster’s wrong end,
“well isn’t your kidneys.”

And July at the gaudy discount chemist,
with brow raised, “Thomas?”
Seems I’m too young
for this off-
sunset pill,
this albatross,
my neck, this
thing.

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This poem was highly commended for Poetry Object 2015

Judge's Notes:
"This poem works with narrative in an impressively economical way, creating vivid dramatic scenes with just a detail or two, and fragments of dialogue. Its details have an almost hallucinatory vividness: ‘tie-stains and errant nose hair’. The pace of this poem is part of its power: it goes so fast it is frightening. It is impressive how the poem uses structure to control and vary its pace: breaking up the lines, coming to a stop on that obdurate word, ‘thing.’ Such craft helps to realise the emotional effect of this poem, which is considerable."
~Lisa Gorton, Poetry Object Judge 2015