Bypass

One day it’s Miss Scarlet with
the Candlestick in the Conservatory,
the next they’re carting someone
down the corridor to where Dr. Black
with the chisel in the O.R.
waits to crack the vault of a chest.
It’s not a calico cat, purring
all night by a child’s side,
not acne, not the daily rush
to the job, it’s a gurney pulsing
along a narrow passageway,
and it seems you are that someone
for whom the Heart Team scrubs,
a corpuscle the color of dusk,
wanting for air, and no clue
how you got there, nor who waits
so silently behind the next door,
Colonel Mustard or Professor Plum,
come to the Ballroom with the Rope.

*Since his 1997 2nd place debut in The Washington Post’s “Worst Poetry Contest,” Roy Jacobstein has published more than 100 poems in many literary journals, including The Gettysburg Review, Parnassus, Poetry Daily, The Threepenny Review, and TriQuarterly. His poems have been Runner-up for the Marlboro Review and Indiana Review Poetry Prizes, received Prairie Schooner’s Reader’s Choice Award, and won Mid-American Review’s James Wright Prize. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass just selected one poem as Runner-up for The Iowa Review’s 2005 Poetry Award and another poem has been selected for inclusion in the textbook LITERATURE: Reading Fiction, Poetry & Drama (McGraw-Hill, 2006).