Sky for Stained Bandages

by Fritz Ward

At the sidewalk bistro crowded with pharmacists
               and x-ray technicians, the handicapped girls strum
                              the spokes of their wheelchairs, singing do-why-didi-
-didi-dum-didi-do . . .

                              A trio of musicians loosens the post-happy
               hour crowd with steel drums.
A highball glass sweats and grows heavy
               under the falling sun. The evening is a streetcar on fire,

a little Havana of the heart.
               The waitress, all hips and rosary beads, circulates
                              with a pitcher of sangria and a razor blade. The pathologist
writes succulent in Spanish across a napkin

                             and leaves a prescription of folded twenties.
               Ambulance lights ricochet
off the glassy storefronts, delivering
               the ill and injured to the disinfected. Nothing stays sterile

for long. In the waiting room,
               the priest’s wife kneels and receives
                              a second heart attack. All prayers are placebos.
Each certified voice medicates

                              and needles. A plea to the angel
              of angioplasty wilts in a glass vase. All the nurses
have a nervous habit over-sweetening
              their tea. They share a belief in exploratory

surgery. On Thursday nights, they clutch
              fists full of gauze and wheel the girls
                            from the burn ward across the street, ready
for the wounds that will reopen and weep.

 

Fritz Ward’s poems have appeared in more than twenty journals, including Columbia, AGNI, Southern Poetry Review, Wisconsin Review, Portland Review, and Tampa Review. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where he served as a poetry editor for the Greensboro Review.  He lives in Sarasota, Florida.