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NARCISSUS AT THE PHARMACY

Now that I am sick,
I have become
so important
to myself.

My reflection in every
surface, no matter 
how marbled or matte.

My story swelling
like a Magic Eye 
in every page I read.

The world is ending, yes,
but am I not a world?
 
A country, at least, to the
lives that live within me—
the bodies and antibodies.
Custodians and usurpers.

And like a tyrant
bedbound with gout,

I have been waking
in the witching hour,
obsessing over legacy

and who will inherit
my debts and vendettas. 

Ach, the moon is such 
a lousy prescription.
Such a queasy pill.

And the river is such 
an inattentive orderly.

This soil has such a 
bitter bedside manner.
So unsteady a hand to hold.

Atop this crematory heap 
of suffocating supplicants,

as the hot ash finds
the last of the Minoans,
scuttled in fields of saffron,

I beg and I weep and I rage:

But what about me?
Beautiful me?
What will become,
after all, of me?
 

This poem was originally published in the Fall 2020 Issue of Beloit Poetry Journal.

© 2024 by Anthony Immergluck. Created with Wix.com

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