Page 60 - WTPO Vol. VII #5

Daniel lev Shkolnik
The Doctor’s Treatment
People come to my clinic hidden
at the back of a convenience store.
The babies they bring me
do not laugh at my toy bunny.
Children, 12 to 21, grow up to inherit prosthetic limbs their siblings have outgrown. Men and women are brought to me
who watch ten hours of news a day.
Their bags have been packed for seven years, ready for the moment the war will end.
Some have suffered long enough
and simply want an enema
to clean completely out the stuff
that raises up nauseous waves of hope.
The treatment I suggest,
what works the longest and gives most rest,
is the complete removal of the heart.
Pointing at the jars on the shelf, I assure them I’ve performed it many times
including on myself.
The heart attempts, as always, to grow back though smaller every time.
My own hearts sit atop a rack
in a diminishing series of jars
each from Heinz. They pay the fee
with heirlooms or with wedding rings. I assuage them with a final guarantee: “It’s painful for a moment
but then you will not feel a thing.”
Shkolnik’s fiction and poetry has appeared at the Beacon Art Gallery in Boston, as part of the Yale Art Museum poetry anthology Lux, et Veri- tas, as well as in Unbroken Journal, Lotus Eaters, The Fictional Cafe, SIIR, Cease, Cows, Apparent Magnitude, Bangalore Review, Abramelin, and elsewhere. He’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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