Sky For Stained Bandages Poem by Fritz Ward

At the sidewalk bistro crowded with pharmacists
and x-ray technicians, the handicapped girls strum
the spokes of their wheelchairs, singing do-why-didi-
-didi-dum-didi-do...

A trio of musicians loosens the post-happy
hour crowd with steel drums.
A highball glass sweats and grows heavy
under the falling sun. The evening is a streetcar on fire,

a little Havana of the heart.
The waitress, all hips and rosary beads, circulates
with a pitcher of sangria and a razor blade. The pathologist
writes succulent in Spanish across a napkin

and leaves a prescription of folded twenties.
Ambulance lights ricochet
off the glassy storefronts, delivering
the ill and injured to the disinfected. Nothing stays sterile

for long. In the waiting room,
the priest's wife kneels and receives
a second heart attack. All prayers are placebos.
Each certified voice medicates

and needles. A plea to the angel
of angioplasty wilts in a glass vase. All the nurses
have a nervous habit over-sweetening
their tea. They share a belief in exploratory

surgery. On Thursday nights, they clutch
fists full of gauze and wheel the girls
from the burn ward across the street, ready
for the wounds that will reopen and weep.