The Enema

Don’t tell me you have suffered pain!
Don’t tell me that the April rain
Will bring Spring showers
And the poets grain
Of hope, fertility and Natural Gain.
Go away —
Let me die —
Leave me to lie —
The tube unending to the sky
My buttocks raised for the physician’s eye.

Get you behind me matron!
Your quarts of water will disembowel me
Your platitudes will infuriate me.

Tumor or Rupture —
Blockage or structure —
It’s all the same to I
PLEASE — let me die!

by Lorna Bain — December 29th, 1985