The Abdominal Exam

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.