SoMa Literary Review - Charity after the Hurricane

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"SoMa Literary Review" Author

The Underwater Hospital

By Jan Steckel
Zeitgeist Press
ISBN: 0-929730-76-3

Excerpt Poem:

Charity after the Hurricane

By Jan Steckel

Hydrocephalus Boy is doing okay.

His shunt's the only thing that's draining around here.

The gomer with the Marines tattoo boxed his beans.

Guy hasn't peed in two days,

and we got no dialysis,

no power,

no suction,

no lights.

Rick's sewing people up by flashlight in the OR

since the ER's an aquarium.

Jeannie's suctioning green crap

out of the Funny Looking Kid's trach

with an ear-bulb and a syringe.

Looks like a giant turkey-baster.

Kid's circling the drain.

We've been bag-ventilating the guy

with Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome

since Monday. We take turns.

My hands ache.

No more water to drink, but if you're thirsty,

I can put in an IV and fill up your tank.

You look like an easy stick.

You want potassium in that, doctor?

Got no coffee, but there's Ritalin left in the pharmacy.

I sent the derm resident

to salvage some crackers from the cafeteria.

Yeah, I know it's underwater.

He's from Harvard.

Don't they have a swimming requirement there?

He's gotta be good for something.

Stay out of the east stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors.

That's where we're stacking the bodies.

There's ten feet of water flooding the morgue

and fluid filling up the lungs

of the Little Old Lady in heart failure.

She sounds wet.

She may have made it off her roof,

but she's drowning from the inside.

Water, water, everywhere.

My throat's dry.

My lips are cracked.

My knuckles hurt.

We paddled these people across the street in a canoe,

one by one.

We carried them up eight flights of stairs

to the parking garage roof.

We're waiting for helicopters they told us would be here.

ARDS-man just croaked.

My hands are sore from squeezing that bag.

I kept him alive for four days

and now he's kicked the bucket on the motherfucking roof

because the helicopters haven't come.

Little Old Lady's chest is too stiff to move.

The bag just won't push it up and down anymore.

She's toast.

Too much water on the inside,

nothing but water on the outside,

and not even a Diet Coke to drink.

I'm just going to sit down here.

I'm just going to put my head in my hands.

I'm just going to let my shoulders shake.

I'm not crying.

I'm too dry.

Also by Jan Steckel on SoMa Literary Review:

Getting Slammed & 35th Avenue Ladybug

Oakland writer and performance poet Jan Steckel’s work has also appeared in Margin, Lodestar Quarterly, BiMagazine, The Pedestal Magazine. She is the author of The Underwater Hospital.