ART OF NURSING
By Kim Goldberg
Terra Incognita This brain was meant to be my offering so I would not be thought a gate-crasher at your garden party I tried to save you some wrapping it carefully in Saran held aloft with toothpicks to preserve the topping But I got hungry along the way The years have gnawed my impulse control down to spotless nubs (is this demyelination?) I do not understand these crumbs in my pocket (are they poems?) Please forgive me for arriving empty-handed I won’t stay long
Kim Goldberg is an award-winning poet and journalist and the author of six books, including Red Zone (Pig Squash Press, 2009), a collection of poems on urban homelessness. Another collection, Ride Backwards on Dragon (Leaf Press, 2007), was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She won the Rannu Fund Poetry Prize for Speculative Literature in 2008. She is currently writing a nonfiction book about people living with electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Goldberg lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Contact author:
[email protected]. Art of Nursing is coordinated by Sylvia Foley, senior editor:
[email protected]. ▼
[email protected] AJN ▼ October 2014
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Vol. 114, No. 10
33