I feel sick.
I have trouble breathing.
I rush to the emergency room.
They make me wait.
I sit for twenty minutes
on a stained plastic bench
retaining the liquids
of blood, vomit, urine,
stifling my breathing.
I go to the desk
ask how long.
A kindless nurse
says: 'I'll be called
when it's my turn'.
I wait another thirty minutes
desperation strangling me.
I get up to inquire
and collapse on the floor.
I lay there for twenty minutes
before anyone helped me,
another poverty case
in a crumbling system,
treatment determined
by ability to pay.
“Emergency Room” was printed in Tracks, No. 9 of Inwood Indiana. Pick up the paperback from Prolific Press; the stories and poems published online are free to read here.
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