During the interview
I felt as though I were speaking
to a friend and panicked
how will he know me
if I don’t tell him explicitly
in our one, thin hour
We discussed why some doctors
scorn addicts
so much
left behind in training
like how asphalt takes
from ten-year-old legs
knee pads, I argued
he countered
there is a generation of physicians
who equate drugs with prison
and I don’t know what to do about it either
if not knee pads, then poetry
let them write
until they remember
being born screaming
until they are attuned to the screaming
of people finished being born
or maybe until they can name
the ten-or-twelve threads
holding today together
ten-or-twelve ways to describe
each moment a car could have hit you
and then didn’t
or we can just wait
for some misled people to die I
didn’t say
remembering
that I was wearing a suit
and had waited years for this
to be asked
why people think they are above each other
and what it was like
to grow up in Queens