The German Word for Hospital Is Sick House

Abstract

The German Word for Hospital Is Sick House Steven Espada Dawson (bio) and if you die in Amsterdam, a poetwill sing at your funeral. Europeansgot these two things right. At the last apartment you'll ever live in, I could read Ulyssesbefore the hot water turns on. A dozen vasesin your cabinets, not a single flower. Your death the last refrigerator magnet left to collect. You swallow nineteen pillsthree times a day. Throw your head back. Your throatan hourglass, counting. Your body's drip panabacus. I wonder how many pounds of you is medicine. The German word for ambulanceis sick car. The hospital air is hotsandpaper on my skin. We're here too often.The nurses call me by my middle name—like I did something wrong. Your eyes two ocean buoysgasping for air. The body doesn't go easilybut it does go. I daydream that the memoryfoam pillow I brought you will remember the awful yawnof your death rattle. The short life of a sound. When you die, I'm convinced a bell will ringin some far place inside me. You said you'd like to run one day in a field of baby'sbreath. In your dreams, all the cellos are nearand out of tune. In my dreamsa thousand windchimes spell a word I can't pronounce. Your death the wind. I cannot point to it.I can point to everything it moves.When you told me you've grown [End Page 72] to fear the dark, it bustedevery lit bulb inside me. Please— put a flashlight in my mouth, mom.I will thin my cheeks for you.Let me light the way. [End Page 73] Steven Espada Dawson Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles and lives in Austin, Texas. He is the son of a Mexican immigrant and a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow. His recent poems appear in Adroit Journal, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review Online, POETRY, Split Lip, and Waxwing. Copyright © 2022 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents