from Hospital Pamphlet

He emails with no punctuation, my dad
knows aliens
gave the world Covid
which is true, yes
if a virus is a foreign shell inside us
that rewrites our genetic sentence
to proliferate more
in each cough’s aerated mucus drops
what cannot survive
without our patchwork body
the movement seems clear
from believing the only black president
was not born American
to saying the Chinese and aliens
are conspiring against humanity
which will bring god’s resurrection
a radiance he sees in his dreams
life is joyful
in silent moments
when the body is pulled by its debt
of sugars to the office chair
between a patient dying of Covid in room 7
and a living one whose heart is
a slow packhorse on my screen, I wonder
what are you doing here, you beating thing
methodical in your muscular work
I love when a valve is diseased so grossly
the cause of the body’s illness
clicks into place
so now the jugular distends serpentine
and purple with a reason
that surgery maybe
can repair, my patient lived
the one with the funky teal hair, I hope
I never see her again, it could have been
any summer night
when gunshots broke the air
my dad in rigor and storm
barricaded doors with chairs, he charged
from window to curtained window
with a pistol clenched in his fist
what is normal
is what the body can bear, repeated
until it becomes emergency
my childhood remodeled itself
with books and endless TV to compensate
for outside threats and inside
where chocolate cereal
was never lacking from the cupboard
so I might eat and grow and the heart
might trot
past boarded up buildings and new
smashed windows
I bike in warm breath-like wind
that carries chip bags, dust, and receipts
trash from a recent American past
that wavers and pauses and lifts in air
of course a virus thrives here
why wouldn’t a protein capsule be filled
with what world exists outside it, a city
is not barren but a body full of words
and bobbing flower heads on stalks
and oil-colored geese buoyant in the sky
plastic bags stuffed with plastic bags
my father with pistol in hand
pacing the hallways of my sleep
slow packhorse that provided and provides
urban trees blossom pink and green
they reach up around me and down
through shredded mulch
through soil and bones
this alien world
of abundant joyful things

Paul Hlava Ceballos has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Artist Trust, and the Poets House. His work has been published in Narrative Magazine, BOMB, the PEN Poetry Series, Acentos Review, and Los Angeles Times, among other journals and newspapers, has been translated to the Ukrainian, and has been nominated for the Pushcart. He has MFA from NYU and currently lives in Seattle, where he practices echocardiography.