Kidney: Or, Instructions to your right on how to live a long life

MARK LIANG

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1. Wake up
        in the house

        with the fence

        and the trees.

 

2. Feel the stone resting inside you. It may appear like an asterisk

        or a blood moon. Development of the

        mineral deposits may be genetic, stress-induced.

        File an appointment with the doctor for Tuesday.

 

3. Prepare fluids, water or Epsom salt solutions.

        There may be some slight discomfort

        as the calcium works its way across the bladder

        unmoving diamond scrapes along passing flesh.

 

4. Take Tylenol for the pain. Your wife

        will ask how you are feeling.

        Lie.

 

5. Crescendos of red descend.

        Hold the child.

        it sleeps miraculously

        through the night.

 

6. Wish that you could too.

 

 

 

 

                                                                Urethra traversed, your body will produce oxytocins.

        death to the pain. hallucinate as the passion passes long after

        you are allowed to. think of Helsinki, magnolias, stagnation.

        cry for the soul that lost what it could grow up to be.

        words do not ask to fall into pattern

        starlets do not dream of \\\ the sky

        yet here we are

        bound to the inseminate friction of our lives

        two /divided by six is just one-third

        sex without love is just fucking.

        hold on in the broken mirrors and quinined drink of reality. List the things: an empty bed,

a motel room

a phone

number, unwashed lace, and this

child.

 

8. Come Tuesday, visit the doctor. Internist

        will be having a bad day. It’s been a long day.

        There have been worse days.

        Tell yourself everything is fine.

        Everything is fine. How’s the family.

        Fine.

        finefinefinefinefine

 

9. Come back to the wife and the baby

        in the house

        with the fence

        and the trees.

 

10. Repeat as needed.

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