1 minute read
Dr. Fauci
Dr. Fauci
Ace Boggess
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Has the perfect bedside manner
for informing a hundred thousand people
they will die in weeks.
Brain tumors, cancer clusters, rats
eating their inner organs—
nothing anyone can do,
unless everyone does it.
Brutal honesty, yet sincere &
soft in his pronouncements
like a mother telling her child
there will be no Christmas gifts this year.
When he says many might pull through with faith-
ful social distancing, it’s easy
to believe him, his voice reassuring
he isn’t caught up in magical thinking.
He acts as though he waits
with his patients in ICU,
holding their hands,
saying goodbye,
wishing a happy journey.
No father of death, he adopted—
watch him teach that rotten boy respect.
Ace Boggess is an author of five books of poetry including Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid American Review, Rattle, River Styx, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. His sixth collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press in 2021
Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash
