The nurse looks away from the patient
whose back is arced in a swoon,
a skin-and-bone parabola.
 
She rolls her eyes to their corners
as if to say: I’m fed up with this
light-dark, fall-catch charade,
 
I’m sick of bracing my knees
in wait for the sudden drop
of their weight, I’m sick
 
of the smell of their black-outs,
sweat on serge or wool, sour
as ammonia. Their impromptu
 
urine, warmly worming down
my own skirt and over my shoes.
And I don’t believe them anyhow.
 
Her hands are clasped against the patient’s
ribs, thick washer-woman’s fingers,
latticed like skin-and-bone basketwork.
 
She does not understand his modus
operandi, and why these women
faint away when the light is quenched
 
like a match disappeared into
a mouth. She lets their heads
loll back, inept new mother.
 
She holds her pose, a tedious pietà,
in the dark. She hears the glass of photo
plates slide like swords into a magician’s box.