Poet of the MonthJoanna ValenteSeptember 02, 2021Daisy Bassen, poetry, poet of the month

Daisy Bassen: September 2021 Poet of the Month

Poet of the MonthJoanna ValenteSeptember 02, 2021Daisy Bassen, poetry, poet of the month

Perseveration

What is an MRI?

She only asked a few more times

But I remember it as a hundred,

The slight climbing scale of half-steps

Within her monotone, her head

Like a heliotrope moving on its stalk.

The sickest girl on the unit,

In recent memory, the researcher

Announced, bestowing a first place

Finish. What is an MRI?

There is no answer, it’s magnetism

And the computer does something

Instead of trays of acids eating plates

In the red light darkroom, like the inside

Of a vein and not an artery.

It’s not going to explain anything,

It can’t shore up a sandcastle that’s slumping

Even before the tide eats its way back in.

It’s not going to tell why her father

Pretended he was a ghost, ha! smeared his face

Against the window in her single room.

What is an MRI? We didn’t answer,

You and I, we knew so little. We found

Our way less gracefully than zombies

With their brains melted down like wax,

Like runny vanilla custard, an invalid’s meal,

Blanc-mange. We knew not to share a glance

But I stepped closer to you, away from her.

Praxis. What is. What is an MRI.

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has appeared in Oberon, McSweeney’s and [PANK] among other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

Joanna Valente