D.A. Jenkins

Ashland MFA Candidate

TRANSPOSITION OF THE GREATER ARTERIES

Is the diagnosis; despite how you wiggled through the ultrasound.
Later, the MFM gives us a plush, teal dinosaur with yellow dots
When I squeeze it, the box inside plays your heartsounds.
It sounds like: ah-whourrh, ah-whourrh, ah-whourrh.

I study diagram after diagram of ventricles
Arteries and atriums like snaking rivers;
Seeking the branch where my genes went awry,
But the heart, after all, is a hollow vessel.

It echoes frantic, like the monitor alarms,
The wires, tangled vines clinging to your chest.
I delicately sift through the kudzu to hold you;
You dawned into my world, colored a dusky blue.

Doctors cut into me with images of how your ribs
Will snap apart like Legos, giving the surgeon access
To play God, then wires clamp you back into the box;
Your set shipped broken, major assembly required.

Six days after you’re born, my defenses bypassed,
A nurse sets up the app that sends video updates:
Potential penultimate moments, livestreamed.
Your mom names this torture: information rape.

I clutch my chest when they take you away;
I beg to tear out my own heart as offering.
These words and gestures are also hollow,
No wind to carry them or their barren cargo.

Waiting brings a sense of calm at the storm’s center;
Good news comes eventually on the gentle tide.
But they bring you back with limbs splayed out
Every inch of you covered in bandages, wires, and drips.

You are fixed, more than I ever hoped for or deserved,
So why do you appear half-dead? Tubes breathe
For you, your wasted blood drains into containers;
Are your dreams pleasant or filled with horror?

I watch the nurse’s shaking hands as she retapes your breath.
Incubation to intubation, diagram to diaphragm;
I lay each night and listen to your respiration—
Tonight, I only hear the machines.

I wake in the night, ears groping for your sounds.
I see you, face twisted in a silent scream.
I place my ear inches from the breathing tube—
I hear you, agony echoing up from a deep cave.

I can do nothing to comfort or make it better,
Standing helpless while the monitors blink green,
I see you fumbling, frantic in the dark. So,
I place my hand on your head and whisper:

Hold on, my son, and soon your ship will sail.

__________

D.A. JENKINS RESIDES IN THE MIDWEST AND HAS A MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING. HE IS PRONE TO DREAMING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE, DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ASK.