did my superhero ~ abandon ~ assignment
a slight second chance at mobility
my spine ~ an erector set ~
stepped on ~ bent in rain ~

an albino cobra ~ twists dorsally
a backbiter ~ my own blood
broken zipper ~ jams at bottom
steel lodges ~ to scatter my spine

like~ drive by bullets ~ an articulated lattice
I feed my back ~ a tubular decline of railroad tracks
Advil discs ~ bombard me
lumbar lifesavers ~ runs of the past
ghostly ~ communion melts ~ unlike whale song

overexposed MRI ~ headphones
discography ~ angiogram
interpretation ~ from a ~ skilled surgeon
~ transverse lateral fusion

The OR chill ~ defines absence ~ not reassurance
where masked gowned ~ medics
speak an Ur-language ~ beside soundwaves discordant
as my groggy cerebrum ~ reaches for a hand

steely table ~ reflects ~ my presence
a rhythmic aorta ~ blips a screen
a buffer where blood ~ needle dye
moves throughout ~ columnar space

a red pen ~ scribbles ~ through veins
awakens to air ~ screaming clatter
in ears~ of record skip ~ cerebellum
a plum trapped in ~ a reluctant body

Diane Klammer is a disabled writer, singer-songwriter, painter, retired therapist, and biology teacher. Her work has appeared in the United States and Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, and Australia.  She has appeared in Lummox, Avocet, Open Earth Eco Poems, Rattle, Spaces, Syncopation Review and Missing Slate Review. She writes from a place of humor and compassion, and is grateful for diverse voices of poetry in books, music and film. Her new book, Nonlinear Healing is coming out from Finishing Line Press.