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Medical Question Box
​In the time before talking movies
two men meet on the street in Chicago.
Frank Lydston, urologist, says “touch
me” and you touch him— beneath
the shirt, beneath the collar, beneath
the vest— six free-roaming testes
implanted between the skin and the ribs.
And later, in a closet under chandeliers,
Frank Lydston becomes nude, “like
Apollo” he says,  and discloses a third nut
visible to the naked eye, plucked
from a condemned prisoner and
grafted to the patient, himself,
by the surgeon, himself.
 
He could do a handstand,
rejuvenated by the virile
glands of a man no older
than 35, hale and fit.
He could simmer with rage.
Others favored apes or goats,
or prayer. As in cathedrals,

where the saints were skimmed off
from their bones in portions,

the parts of bodies multiplied
as flowers in the spring.

​Edward Bright,  Otherwise Called “The Fat Man of Maldon”
​I too am 47.5 stone mate
I fit seven hundred men inside
the soft body of the waist coat
standing and collecting winnings
from the gullible men of the city.

I die at the age of 29
overwhelmed and shortly
thereafter Apostolo Zeno
and Jacques Ferron,
the prodigies, and
Philemon Ewer, the master
shipbuilder among
many and Johann
Sebastian Bach.

These and other men allowed
in the space of my body
and the sweets I try
on Maldon’s High Street
and men I eat from
the Dengie Hundred.
I am the grocer and I 
make clear room.

We are different kinds of teens
at different times.
And different babies.
And different at different times
sucking milk and
throwing rocks at
one another.
And at times dead of plague.
And at times worshipful of God.
And at times dizzy from the
tall towers.
And at times passing from
one state to another.
At times vast hungry and at times
a mere speck asleep.

I ate so much. I died.
They say.
A bronze statue in my shape
installed A.D. 2000
on the King’s Head I
toppled from so billions
of times.
Outbillioned and shaped.
Made space with my largemouth
for the years of billions.
And centuries.
And like Dead Bach who
sucks in God spread
open the sheet of waist-coat
from coal-sheathe burning
to let myself open to the ravenous air
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  • HOME
  • WINTER 2022 ISSUE
  • SUBMISSIONS
    • Submission Form
  • ABOUT
  • LITTLE BLACK BOOK
    • A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
  • SHOP