THE FEVER ROOM: CHANG CHUN CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, 1991
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/333/1/-THE-FEVER-ROOM-CHANG-CHUN-CHILDRENS-HOSPITAL-1991/Page1.html
Kevin Dobbs
Kevin Dobbs returned to the USA
recently after 18 years in Asia. He’s Dean of Language Arts and Fine
Arts at Yuba College in Northern California and has placed poems,
fiction, and essays in many journals and anthologies including Chelsea,
Raritan: a Quarterly Review, The New York Quarterly, Carolina
Quarterly, Florida Review, Sou’wester, Soundings East, Poet Lore,
Mid-American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Karamu, Gulf Stream, Writer’s Forum, and New Delta Review. By Kevin Dobbs
Published on 11/23/2005
Beside our daughter
all night
Tan Yi and I hold tiny arms steady
to keep the IV’s in—
her head a solar bench.
I think about the bed across
from ours, the infant
all night
Tan Yi and I hold tiny arms steady
to keep the IV’s in—
her head a solar bench.
I think about the bed across
from ours, the infant
Beside our daughter
all night
Tan Yi and I hold tiny arms steady
to keep the IV’s in—
her head a solar bench.
I think about the bed across
from ours, the infant
with fever for a week
going beyond heat, beyond
sleep, tumbling
from her mother's lap
into the easy breeze
of space
then the young mother,
bosom still happy with milk,
rolling the body
to the foot of the bed,
then looking back
and gazing
at the ring of sweat.
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2005. All Rights Reserved.
all night
Tan Yi and I hold tiny arms steady
to keep the IV’s in—
her head a solar bench.
I think about the bed across
from ours, the infant
with fever for a week
going beyond heat, beyond
sleep, tumbling
from her mother's lap
into the easy breeze
of space
then the young mother,
bosom still happy with milk,
rolling the body
to the foot of the bed,
then looking back
and gazing
at the ring of sweat.
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2005. All Rights Reserved.