I cannot tell the doctor’s lie
from heart flutter,
vow to do more squats
so blood won’t pool
in an atrium, clot. My fake self
believes I passed all tests,
sneaks me past surgery theaters
to a movie set. We cower
on a cliff above a plywood town,
keep a sharp lookout
for the sheriff said to have catheters
in each holster. Fake me offers
a noosed rope, says belay
to the general store, bring back brie,
ice cream, chocolate, wine.
Hunger drives me to the edge.
I strap both ventricles down.
(published inThe Bond Street Review)
Mary Dale Watercolor
40-second animated video of atrial fibrillation
Timothy Pilgrim, a native of Montana and retired university journalism professor living in Bellingham, WA, is a Pacific Northwest poet and 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems have been accepted more than 500 times by journals such as Toasted Cheese, Mad Swirl, Cirque, Santa Ana River Review, Windsor Review, Hobart, Otoliths and Prole Press in the U.S. Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. He is the author of Mapping water and Seduced by metaphor:Timothy Pilgrim collected published poems, which the back cover calls “a 10 on any Richter imagination scale.”
Mary Dale Watercolor