Weekly Poem: ‘Elegy VII (Last Moment)’

By Jason Schneiderman

In her last waking moments she was crying,
humiliated. The nurses had f’d up the
“cleansing” drink, and she had to drink it twice,
the part she hated most from the previous
procedures. We joked on the phone about the name
of the drink: “Go lightly” — the unintended
Breakfast at Tiffany’s reference, poor pretty
Audrey revived as a gritty killer laxative.
After the second dosing, the smell in the ward
was so bad they put her in a quarantine bathroom,
the kind with a reverse airflow. When someone
dies, I think it’s normal to be angry, to find
something to be angry about. Well this is it.
Where I put my anger. What I wish I could change.

Jason Schneiderman is the author of “Striking Surface,” winner of the Richard Snyder prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and “Sublimation Point” (Four Way Books). He directs the Writing Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.