On the themes of Gratitude and Rivers
Ode to Crohn’s
Let us pretend,
my devoted companion,
that it’s not I who have you
but you who have me:
that you’re the man and I
am the disease
that shaped you
in ways only a god can,
out of some rough thing
as ordinary as a stone,
for who wouldn’t ache
to understand such power
how, like a universe,
you could not even exist
and then—bang!—suddenly be
steersman of all my thoughts
and movements, engineer of
only my most constructive agonies,
divine architect of my dreams,
scattering myriad ulcerations like worries
as persistent as the stars, your will’s
fistula tracking through me
like a wormhole linking two folds
of time: Before you, and After.
That way, when pretended
understandings are good
as true, I’ll have only to change
us (either by killing you or
singing you into a deep sleep)
while remaining the one
your attentions drew
out of that rough thing
just waiting to be
polished.
Needle
How can I still be afraid
of an item I know so well?
I haven’t used you in recreation
but often felt you
used me, though I know you’re
just a blameless component
of what it means to live disease.
But it’s more than that,
for your point gleams
mortality—through pain
the puncture brings, and also
your capacity to trespass,
jutting with the coldness of a spear
inside our outermost (our
beauty-deep) margin and even
the sanctity of our veins, tapping
the pulse of that confluence of rivers
rushing along through us like life.
Author Biography
Jason M. Vaughn lives on a farm in Kansas City, KS. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Contrary, The 2River View, and In the Black/In the Red: Poems of Profit and Loss. His screenplay, The Synth House Wife, was a grand-prize winner in Script Pipeline’s 2012 Screenwriting Competition.