Daisy Bassen: September 2021 Poet of the Month

Daisy Bassen: September 2021 Poet of the Month
Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Perseveration

            What is an MRI?

            What is an MRI?

            She only asked a few more times

            But I remember it as a hundred,

            The slight climbing scale of half-steps

            Within her monotone, her head

            Like a heliotrope moving on its stalk.

            The sickest girl on the unit,

            In recent memory, the researcher

            Announced, bestowing a first place

            Finish. What is an MRI?

            There is no answer, it’s magnetism

            And the computer does something

            Instead of trays of acids eating plates

            In the red light darkroom, like the inside

            Of a vein and not an artery.

            It’s not going to explain anything,

            It can’t shore up a sandcastle that’s slumping

            Even before the tide eats its way back in.

            It’s not going to tell why her father

            Pretended he was a ghost, ha! smeared his face

            Against the window in her single room.

            What is an MRI? We didn’t answer,

            You and I, we knew so little. We found

            Our way less gracefully than zombies

            With their brains melted down like wax,

            Like runny vanilla custard, an invalid’s meal,

            Blanc-mange. We knew not to share a glance

            But I stepped closer to you, away from her.

Praxis. What is. What is an MRI.

 


Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has appeared in Oberon, McSweeney’s and [PANK] among other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.