Lung

smoke of Churchill's cigar. But there was an hour to go and other essays

          to write. Africa. The American

Constitution. The lung went suddenly limp as an empty pajama sleeve

spread out on the bed. He looked up at the smeared blackboard

and remembered Chekhov at Yalta

spitting up blood, looking like Paul Muni playing Emile Zola, ogling

          women. In present time,

the lung just couldn't get any attention, swelling now like a sigh trying

to escape from a book. It began to curl like a manta ray riffling the ends

of its body as it slid deeper into the bottom

currents of a tropical sea. No question it was hiding. He was breathing

          hard, heart pounding, two jobs taking a toll—

at home a father drinking up a storm. The lung fluttered and went sailing

into the ribs of an eerie white wreck. He gasped. Africa, 500 words.

The lung tried so hard not to flatten like drapes

pulled shut to block the air, not to shrink from the glare of Mau Maus,

          the stink of wiped machetes, the stiff gaze

of the teacher. Not to find itself beneath a sterterous father rolling over

in bed every night onto a wife, where all it wanted to do was just collapse.

Or step out into the star-struck night for a little breeze.