Poetry Review Special Feature: "Fixer Doc" by Gerard Sarnat

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present "Fixer Doc" by Gerard Sarnat.  Dr. Sarnat is the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections, Homeless Chronicles:  From Abraham to Burning Man (2010), and Disputes (2012).  His pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in eighty-five or so journals and anthologies.  As a physician, Dr. Sarnat has set up and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised; he has also been a CEO of health care organizations, and a Stanford professor.  His work has been reviewed in The Huffington Post, and his third poetry collection, 17s, in which each poem, stanza or line has seventeen syllables, is slated to be published later this year.

Fixer Doc

Gerard Sarnat                               

i. Hardcore Dys-Orthopod

Writer works to get under skin, doc rushes through gore he bathes within... 

Shrieking from someone else's head,

the only thing I wore was my pain.

Scrunched on all fours, morphine’s rush alerts me to the lure of narcotics.

Throw away crutches, sneak

in the med locker -- Lord, I can more’n walk!

Failing to toe the thin professional line

between order, chaos;

months of success pocketing half-used Demerol vials; penile pustules

fester faster than tracks discovered

under my tongue. On probation,

if only I could forge a gentleman-junkie’s DEA license.

ii. Pitiable Plea

Sob story right side of the tracks turned wrong,

tears piss puke dental pain yips,

if you don’t publish my piece of shit this time, I’m gonna kill me now

or start using again you are my only hope.

Steven, cheers, Gerry. 

Poet's Notes:  “Fixer Doc” will follow “Nobel Prize Valedictory” in my third collection, 17s.  They demonstrate the medical profession's flip sides.  “Fixer” takes off from a deceased colleague’s reality, but brings it back home to my own "addiction" to writing poetry.

Editor's Note:  The "Pitiable Plea" part of the poem makes it autobiographical and obviously more personal--a nice touch.  The use of alliteration works well in both parts of the poem, and the shock and awe imagery produces a visceral reaction--one of fascination, revulsion, and pity.