Tiffany Atkinson

Mr Broad’s morphine


When it all got bad I couldn’t see an end
to it I couldn’t see how it would work out.
Am I going to die? I said. The nurse didn’t
bat an eyelid. Then

they were wheeling me to theatre bumping
down the old farm track I knew each rut and there
was the farmer sat on the bed with a sheep
and the dog. The dog

was on the floor and he wanted to sell me
the dog. This is what we were worried about.
So we talked it all the way through and when I
got back to the ward

I said Kathy Kathy turn off the fan it
smells of you know. Poo. It smells of shit. But the
smell got worse it was thick like a bandage I
couldn’t believe how

anyone could walk around in that. KATHY
I said and looked down into the valley where
there was a music festival I could see
the lights the dancing

and was terrified because they didn’t know
about the poo the shit and I was waving
waving standing on the bed and shouting out.
Then it did. It came

exploding through the valley in a thick wave
dreadful awful and they didn’t CARE   They were
playing in it swimming and so forth chucking
it around breathing

it in Iesu mawr it was the most dreadful
the worst. Look I’m sitting here with tears in my
eyes just trying to tell you. But the nurses
they can make your life

a misery and it won’t even you know
be visible or they can save your life. It’s
a relationship and if you’re some grumpy
old scrote well I tried

to keep my manners even when you know. But
you don’t want to hear this let me try again.
That was the worst part and god help me love no
verse can come of that.


*


Neuropathy


Is it odd
that eighteen months
into his treatment

Dad’s neuropathy
    (collateral from chemo
no sensation in his finger-
tips or feet

and irreversible
he cannot do his buttons
sense the dog’s fur
    or stay on a bicycle)

subdues him more
than all the Gormenghast
of cancer? He’s

an army man
pragmatic as a horse
and he dislikes how I mythologise

It’s true
that in his illness
I have found a way of daughtering
that falters as he rights himself

but this is not King Lear
nor pain and all its gaudy wagons
but the dusty silence after

First rule    said a triage nurse
    the shouter isn’t necessarily
the worst-off    Pain’s

a vital sign    Look for the one
who’s drawn himself in
like a stone    Look

for the one (from convent
Sundays thirty years ago
I’ve dredged up Father Damien
‘the lepers’ priest’) who

at the story’s turn
delivers implacably
    the sermon on caritas

with one hand spitting
in the altar candle’s
        flame


*


Consent


On the radio it wasn’t tyranny
she just said
all the men that have assaulted me in my life
have been nice guys
in a voice that made me think of when your finger
pushes through the cellophane and touches cool meat
FLESH    you think    with your flesh
I was cooking dinner like a citizen
The interviewer was like    woah
I put the chicken down and walked outside
The lawn    the herbs    the ornamental tree
What a sharp and unexpected boredom
Have I    Have I given my consent    O lazy
girl if you don’t burn down suburbia
where can you go with a pretty mouth    Who
will you bury in ankle-length yesses and pearls
Mum arises in the backdraft of my cigarettes
though so long into the dark herself she has
poor working syntax and is flat-out knackered 
Kid    she spells on the threshold    Even the wind
that cannot read or bone a chicken knows its own mind
 

*

A line from the doctor (annotated)


We are trying to avoid the word pain
It is far too full of itself    This

is less a problem of language
than a problem of belief

Anyone can tolerate a small scratch
Anyone can manage their discomfort

but tug on the root of peine/
                                           poena/
                                                     poine
who knows what you might drag up

and blood-feud    judgment    hellfire    torment
these are no longer medical concerns

Keep the language clean and well-lit
Leave its shadows swinging on the gate
 

 I  Dolorimeter: 19 readings
    11     /ˌdɒləˈrɪmɪtə/
    12     Table 8.1: What makes patients anxious about gastroscopy
    14     Heroin works
    15     Found poem I
    17     Accident & Emergency
    19     Song of a pain
    20     McGill Pain Questionnaire (annotated) please tick
    21     Mr Broad’s morphine
    23     Neuropathy
    25     SOCRATES
    27     Found poem II
    28     A Biblical pain    & an aside on bedside manner
    30     Pranidhana
    31     A line from the doctor (annotated)
    32     Clean windows
    34     A bad cold
    35     Signs of the body: longitudinal sample at tea break
    36     Last
    38     The smokers outside Bronglais hospital

    II
    41     You can’t go there
    50     The heart it’s true looks jaunty
    51     Walking with Virginia
    52     In this class
    53     Mantras
    54     The department of small arts
    55     Consent
    56     Dear Sam
    57     It is a very gracious hotel
    58     Workshop
    59     Panels
    60     There is no sexual relation
    61     Hymn
    62     Dog speaks
    63     Categories of experience c. 2016
    64     The poem Kolkata
    65     Wire-seller, Lal-Bazar
    66     Kalighat
    67     Yoga
    68     Parable
    69     Postscript
    70     21 points for a feminist essay on film
    72     Burgeon
    73     Neighbour
    74     Experiment
    76     Eggshell

    79     Notes