The Allergist

We set a date, 10 AM Wednesday, your place.  I show up early in anticipation.  My arm is drawn and quartered with a tattoo over my tattoo.  The same technique, pricked with a pin, but instead of pigment, I get mysterious poison.  It makes math happen before our very eyes.  Shrimp plus lobster equals no shellfish.  The trees; oak, maple, pine, queue into number lines.  Bermuda and crabgrass could be coequal culprits. The Jeopardy song serenades us as we wait for patterns to appear.  Are sesame seeds greater than, or equal to, the value of hummus?  Graph the surface area under the arc of point peanut, to point tree nut.  See if the answer is a proof for preventing migraines or just a new formulaic approach to yard work.  You try all your tricks but fail to get a rise out of me.  In the end, we’re not each other’s type.  No math or chemistry.

The Endocrinologist

As a kid, I galloped across the West with my grandparents in their silver bullet Airstream. On a tour of Hoover Dam, the guide led us right up to the spillway. Lit by rainbows, the cool water sprayed our faces.  Though the generators were the real attraction.  Mountainous turbines spun from miles of copper wire, emitting a loud hum, comforting in their constant current.  Now, I wonder if you took the same tour as a child.  Were monstrous motors the inspiration for your work?  It is how every appointment with you feels.  A peak inside my power pack, contemplate the dials that indicate the voltage is steady.  If anything gets out of spec, a slight adjustment to my sluices brings the flow back into range.  But we’ve never chatted about where all the water behind my dam comes from.   Does the seasonal forecast imply a stable supply?  My generators light me up, and you keep me humming along.  But just for a moment, I’d like to pause spinning and create a backup plan.  After all, I have no contingencies for a drought.  Do you?

The Gastroenterologist

You thread a silver snake through my nose, esophagus, down into my plumbing to preview the quality of my tubes.  You want silk against your scales, but proclaim me burlap.  The need for snakes is heritable.  So, my son also saw a snake charmer to improve his inner habitat; reline his basket, I planned for chenille or velvet.  Instead, I was told his night owl tendencies had nothing to do with painful stomach pipes.  According to this charmer, every kid should be able to sleep through the night with holes in their tummy.  I am too attentive to my family’s animal natures.  Younglings cry at night.  Ignore their howls, he says, eyes hypnotic as Kipling’s Kaa.  Circles back around to say he doesn’t collaborate with snakes, only uses them in tests.  He really is a jeweler, brings out his brilliant box of gems.  Choose a precious drug.  It will rainbow up my child’s inner juices.  We leave with a pile of white and purple sparkles.  I scan the corridors on my way out.  There must be a hidden cistern of bile I can toss that vicious serpent, and his pills, into.

The Ophthalmologist

I make this odyssey after lunch once you’ve had your Satay skewers and are satiated.  The entrance to your cave is smaller than I’d expect in unassuming 1980s office park décor.  Once I’m ushered inside, there are dozens of distinct cavelets.  One that blinds, shoots me with lasers, makes me cry, or teases with puzzles.  If I survive the trials of each, I’ll enter the main cavern to be seen.  Like most giant egos, you prefer docile, sheepish patients.  When you sidle up close to peer into the whites of my eyes, we sit teeth to teeth on edge, dueling for first blink.  Your headlight bright cyclops eye looks into my soul.  Right, then left casting for stowaways.  I’m only released if the corona is clear. 

The Podiatrist

I walk the long hall as you bend down for a closer look.  Barefoot, sounds hushed by the grey carpet.  Again, in shoes, the many flanking doors watch as silently as you.  It’s a lane, like the barn aisles I walk through, without the fresh hay scents, country music, or the clip-clop of hooves.  After days of tuning horses’ feet to their perfect pitch, I sport a limp from constant concrete.  Freeing them from their hobbles, I’ve created a hitch in my get-up-and-go.  You magically approve of my work boots after wasted time with high-heeled clients.  They want to waltz with toes crushed, forced.  You say it takes x-rays to prove proper footwear is the real reason mamas don’t want their babies to grow up to be strippers.  While I wear the appropriate paraphernalia, carrying horses on my back is a bad habit for my small frame.  I’m prescribed orthotics and released to the pasture of the parking lot.  I shake my mane free, realize I’ve met a real-life fairy godmother who uses sorcery to break the curse of women’s glass slippers.

The Psychologist

I recline on the cool leather couch for access to the top of my head.  Scooch the long brown hair aside to unbuckle the clips behind my ears.  You lift my lid to amble through the galleries of my consciousness.  My inner cabinet of curiosities thrives with regular curation.  Since the last appointment, I’ve displayed a Joseph Cornell approach; taxidermied birds, tender woven nests, robin’s egg blue vacancies, a morning chorus to drown out my anxieties.  Since the incessant pecking has subsided, I intend to ask about Mark Dion.  His assemblages of found objects and community projects support the theory of my life as a performance piece.  However, I’m never quite sure if I’ve staged myself correctly.  My in-laws support a more traditional approach, classically trained hung with room to breathe. I have an inferiority complex hung inside my cranium, a generous wedding gift from my inlaws.  I’m here for a second opinion.  Before you put the museum of my mind back together again, do I make good choices?

The Urologist

You come highly recommended as the person in town to help me get my house in order.  Like most, my intimate real estate is jumbled and needs a designer’s eye. I suffer from interstitial clutter.  Harried, I leave bits and bobs lying around where they don’t belong.  The stakes are high. I’ve heard hoarder whispers.  You suggest a waste flow chart for the refrigerator.  Gold stars for remembering the recycling.  My kids are gone and fledged, but their ghosts still haunt the house, little stitches of tension.  I carried them, baby on a hip, always on the right.  The halls have well-worn streaks on the same side. The kitchen is a colander, and pipes have burst under the sink.  Yellowed water is streaming down the cupboard walls.  As you bend down to check it out, you tell the world’s oldest plumbing joke; you know some cracks just can’t be fixed.

The Allergist, The Endocrinologist, and the Opthmalogist were Previously Published by Mackinaw  
https://www.themackinaw.net/christa-fairbrother.html

he Urologist appeared in DMQ Review
https://www.dmqreview.com/fairbrothersu23