Rafael Campo

Not long ago, I studied medicine. It was terrible, what the body told. I’d look inside another person’s mouth, And see the desolation of the world. I’d see his genitals and think of sin. Because my body speaks the stranger’s language, I’ve never understood those nods and stares. My parents held me in their arms, and still I think I’ve disappointed them; they care And stare, they nod, they make their pilgrimage To somewhere distant in my heart, they cry. I look inside their other-person’s mouths And see the wet interior of souls. It’s warm and red in there—like love, with teeth. I’ve studied medicine until I cried All night. Through certain books, a truth unfolds. Anatomy and physiology, The tiny sensing organs of the tongue— Each nameless cell contributing its needs. It was fabulous, what the body told.

What I would like to give them for a change is not the usual prescription with its hubris of the power to restore, to cure; what I would like to give them, ill from not enough of laying in the sun not caring what the onlookers might think while feeding some banana to their dogs— what I would like to offer them is this, not reassurance that their lungs sound fine, or that the mole they’ve noticed change is not a melanoma, but instead of fear transfigured by some doctorly advice I’d like to give them my astonishment at sudden rainfall like the whole world weeping, and how ridiculously gently it slicked down my hair; I’d like to give them that, the joy I felt while staring in your eyes as you learned epidemiology (the science of disease in populations), the night around our bed like timelessness, like comfort, like what I would give to them.

To cure myself of wanting Cuban songs, I wrote a Cuban song about the need For people to suppress their fantasies, Especially unhealthy ones. The song Began by making reference to the sea, Because the sea is like a need so great And deep it never can be swallowed. Then The song explores some common myths About the Cuban people and their folklore: The story of a little Carib boy Mistakenly abandoned to the sea; The legend of a bird who wanted song So desperately he gave up flight; a queen Whose strength was greater than a rival king’s. The song goes on about morality, And then there is a line about the sea, How deep it is, how many creatures need Its nourishment, how beautiful it is To need. The song is ending now, because I cannot bear to hear it any longer. I call this song of needful love my voice.

By menopause, it’s not just estrogen my mother lacks. She’s lost her eldest son— that’s me, the one who’s queer—the doctor who once made her very proud. These days, I do my own wash when I’m home, I cook for her so she can take a break from all the chores she now refuses to assign to me. She sits, half-watching Ricki through her tea’s thin steam, her squint of disapproval more denial than it is disgust. She hears much better than she sees—it’s easier to keep out vision than it is to clear the air of sounds—and yet I know it’s age that stultifies her senses too. Enraged because she’s lost so much, I understand why suddenly she looks so stunned as from the television: “. . . Bitch, she stole my boyfriend, my own mother did! . . .” I fold a towel noiselessly. I know she thinks it’s garbage, sinful, crap—just as she thinks that taking estrogen in pills is not what God intended, no matter what the doctors say; or that I’m gay is plain unnatural, she can’t endure such pain. The oven timer rings. The cookies that I’ve baked are done. I’ll make another batch though she won’t touch them: given up for Lent. My mother’s love. I wonder where it went.

It’s not that I don’t like the hospital. Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave. The smell of antiseptic cleansers. The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true. My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s And oxygen in tanks attached to them— A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared A cigarette, which was delicious but Too brief. I held his hand; it felt Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was, The sunlight pointing down at us, as if We were important, full of life, unbound. I wandered for a moment where his ribs Had made a space for me, and there, beside The thundering waterfall of his heart, I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”

I. Blood We wondered if the rumors got to her. I’d seen her with that other girl behind The Stop and Shop when I was walking home from school one day. I swear, the two of them were kissing, plain as that, the grass so high it brushed their cheeks. I told my teacher so, and maybe it was her who called their folks. Before too long, it was like everyone in town had heard. We waited for them at the dime store once, where Cedric grabbed her tits and said I’ll learn you how to love how God intended it, you ugly fucking dyke. Thing was, she wasn’t ugly like you’d think. She had a certain quality, a shyness maybe, and I’d describe the way she laughed as kind of gentle. Anyway, we never saw her with that girl again. They say she got depressed— shit, at the service all of us got tearful. I got to thinking what an awful sight it was, all that red blood—it wasn’t in the papers, but I heard Melissa’s mother, who was the nurse in the Emergency that night, say how she was just covered up in blood. I can’t think how you bring yourself to cut your throat like that yourself—I asked the counselor they called in to the school, and she said something like,What better ink to write the language of the heart? I guess it proves that stuff from Bible school they say, that such a life of sin breeds misery. II. Phlegm “My brain is draining from my head,” he said as once again he blew his nose. The clock read 3 A.M.; its second hand swept slowly through another viscous minute. Dead to even nurses sticking them for new IVs, the other ones slept off their benders soundlessly. “I’m losing my intelligence,” he said, and blew. My patience waned. He thought he was the president: Dementia, KS, HIV were printed in his problem list. “And plus, I’m getting feverish.” I can’t recall his name, but I remember hating him—grim wish that he would hurry up and die. Just then, he took my hand, and kissed the back of it as though I were a princess in his foreign land. “My lady, you are beautiful,” he said, and coughed again. Unsure of what to say, my own throat burned. He said, “You can’t know what I feel.” III. Bile A gun went off and killed a little girl The day my friend was diagnosed with cancer. I walked through Central Park; a black dog snarled At squirrels chattering like they had answers. The day my friend was diagnosed with cancer I dreamed of killing someone with a knife. The squirrels, chattering, had likely answers To all my angry questions about life— A homeboy threatened someone with a knife Not far from where a cop showed off his gun, An angry answer to most questions about life. I watched the squirrels hop, the yuppies run; The cop approached the black kids with his gun. I wondered how much longer she would live; The squirrels scattered when the homeboy ran. I wondered if she’d ever been in love, I wondered who would pray for her to live, Forgive her for her anger and her weaknesses. I wondered why it hurt to fall in love. The cop tried aiming past me, towards the woods. Forgive us for our anger, for our weaknesses: Through Central Park, past the black dog’s snarls, The cop gave chase. A skirmish in the woods. The gun went off—No! shrieked a little girl. IV. Melancholy We picked at it with sticks at first, until an older kid named Samuel arrived. He dropped a heavy rock right on its skull; we watched as thick black slime began to ooze from somewhere just below its heart—or where we thought its heart should be. “Raccoon,” said someone solemnly. The landscaper— sweat gleaming, like the polished figurines my mother wouldn’t ever let me touch— regarded us with keen suspicion from across the street. We learned what it could teach; like any body’s secrets, the sublime receded toward the fact of death. I knew both sadness, and disgust in love’s untruths.

Says fifty-four-year-old obese Hispanic female — I wonder if they mean the one with long black braids, Peruvian, who sells tamales at the farmers’ market, tells me I’m too thin, I better eat; or is she the Dominican with too much rouge and almond eyes at the dry cleaner’s who must have been so beautiful in her youth; or maybe she’s the Cuban lady drunk on grief who I’ve seen half-asleep, alone as if that bench were only hers, the park her home at last; or else the Mexican who hoards the littered papers she collects and says they are her “documents”; if not, it could be that Colombian drug addict whose Spanish, even when she’s high, is perfect; or maybe it’s the one who never says exactly where she’s from, but who reminds me of my grandmother, poor but refined, lace handkerchief balled up in her plump hand, who died too young from a condition that some doctor, nose in her chart, overlooked.

How difficult it is to say goodbye to scourge. For years we were obsessed with you, your complex glycoproteins and your sly, haphazard reproduction, your restraint in your resistance, how you bathed so slight yet fierce in our most intimate secretions. We will remember you for generations; electron micrographs of you seem quaint already, in the moment of our victory. How difficult it is to claim one’s right to living honestly. The honesty you taught was nothing quite as true as death, but neither was it final. Yes, we vanquished you, with latex, protease inhibitors, a little common sense— what’s that, you say? That some remain at risk? How dare you try to threaten us again! Of course, you’d like to make outrageous claims that some behaviors haven’t changed, that some have not had access to the drugs that mask your presence in the body. Difficult it is, how very sad, to see you strain (no pun intended) at response—our quilts, our bravest poetry, our deaths with grace and dignity have put you in your place. This elegy itself renounces you, as from this consciousness you’ve been erased. The love for you was very strong, the hot pursuits so many of us reveled in— but what once felt like love was really not. I hardly know what I will find to hate as much as I have loved and hated what you brought to bear upon my verse, the weight of your oppression and the joys of truth. How difficult it is—to face the white of nothingness, of clarity. We win!

Before the glimmer of his sunken eyes, What question could I answer with my lies? Digesting everything, it’s all so plain In him, his abdomen so thin the pain Is almost visible. I probe the lump His boyfriend noticed first, my left hand limp Beneath the pressure of the right. With AIDS You have to think lymphoma—swollen nodes, A tender spleen, the liver’s jutting edge— It strikes me suddenly I will oblige This hunger that announces death is near, And as I touch him, cold and cavalier, The language of beneath the diaphragm Has told me where it’s coming from And where I’m going, too: soft skin to rocks, The body reveling until it wrecks Against the same internal, hidden shoal, The treasures we can’t hide, our swallowed gold.