ISSUE V

/ Symptoms
Damned either way,
blocked or broken. This dull pain
of nerve or disc that has never before
spoken or complained,
worked hard to support, and never questioned
its load to bear in this life. Somehow awakened
aching, wanting resolve
and salve.

/ Referral
A choice has been made
for me. Corporate compass spun to point
here. This is where you will go
for history, for healing.

/ Intake
Under 'Family History,' I check
'None that I know of.'
Instead, here is the history of the word,
the one I use from English from
Latin from proto-Indo-European:
acus– the needle
ak– to be sharp
to rise to a point
to puncture.

/ Acupuncturist
This white woman with letters
who pronounces it cheeee and tells me
it means air, in Mandarin. My back pain and my cold
are obstacles in the body's currents,
meridians, like the lines on the earth
marking the distance from here to home

or at least haven or hovel.
Signals attenuate over distance and time,
what wild writhing my ancestors must perform for me to feel
a twitch, a muscle insinuate.

/ Insertion
A thin needle in the eye,
the third one, squinting shut.
She asks, are you sensitive
to the wind? How
is your gallbladder?
She does not ask
the right questions.

/ Time Passed Resting and Maybe Dreaming
I am pinned to this bed, each needle a flag staking claim on this bicep, this ankle
this moonscape of face.
Fear is here too, holding me from shifting and driving a needle too far,
that deep pain like a color rising into a shape.
When I was little, I ate too many chilis and red
fruits, built up my fire to bloom
as a fever or a wound
in a mouth of hot metal fluidly
fluent 流利, blood gold flame.
Balance is a body's governance
火 rising or going
but always a constant, steadfast twin
to this needle dream: zhēn jiǔ
to burn and pierce.
针灸, traditionally 針灸.
In a name, the radical tells you a flicker
of its past— needles were gold, now steel,
alchemy in reverse. Fire cooling and dimmed
leaving just 久.
真久. It really has been so long
and so far.