Robert Riche

FAMILY PORTRAIT

When the nurse calls me in
for my annual check-up, the doctor is seated
before his computer, as if staring
into a fish tank. The blood tests of a week ago,
like little frozen eggs,
have hatched, and he is poking the creatures with his mouse.

He turns and asks me
if anyone in the family ever had a thyroid condition.
An ancient photograph comes to mind of my father's mother,
a lady of stolid peasant stock
standing by the door to a French farmhouse
next to a pile of steaming horse manure,
a bulging goiter rolling from her collar
that I recall my father saying choked her to death.

I remember looking at this picture, then slipping
it unobtrusively into an envelope and tucking it away,
since it hardly complemented
the portrait of my wife smiling from the verandah of the Country Club,
nor my twelve-year-old daughter in her bikini,
holding the medal she won at the school swimming meet,
nor yours truly behind the wheel of the BMW.

When I confess what the fish tank has already told him,
the doctor smiles indulgently, says he has a bit of news.
It seems that Grandma had a "Gene," as if that were the name
of an old boyfriend she'd dumped, and the son of a gun,
like an evil genie,
after 100 years has slipped from the envelope
to choke me to death, too.

Along my family's hard-fought journey from farm to the present,
this camp follower gene, like a despised in-law,
has refused to fall behind, and now
when I would willingly disavow him
he shows up to remind me where I come from,
points with glee
to the horseshit on my shoes.

* * *

SURGERY

Scheduled for a surgical procedure today,
I am welcomed to the inner sanctum,
as when entering a commercial jet, wincing
at the phony smiles of flight attendants,
nevertheless surrendering control
when the door is sealed, giving over
to fate and the pilot's skill.
On long flights I usually push back
and fall asleep. Now here I am
offering my arm to the insertion
of a needle that renders me insensate,
henceforth my life dangling
from an oxygen mask placed
according to procedure over my nose.
I do not dream, being too close
to non-existence. If things go badly,
like wings falling off in flight,
I will just continue
to sleep on, as peacefully
as before I was ever born.
But this flight is smooth. I know,
because I hear an angel whispering in my ear.
"Wake up, young man. Wake up.
Can you say hello?"

Robert Riche is a recipient of a NEA grant, Connecticut Foundation for the Arts grant, Norman Mailer Writers Colony scholar, Breadloaf Writers Conference scholar, He is a published novelist and short story writer, and has written for the stage and film, has published two poetry chapbooks and his poetry appears in many literary magazines.