'DIAGNOSIS'
by Antonia Clark

The evidence is always flimsy,
shadowy images, vague imaginings—

the body's secret history: stones
lodged in crooks and shallows,
scarred fields, accumulated debris.

On its red and blue map—
clogged thruways, weedy back roads
streaming with illegal aliens.

A haunting of drawn breath,
turbulent with rasp and wheeze-—

the scrape and catch of a key
in its lock, a turning, the dark
and empty room beyond.



Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont, and is co-administrator of an online poetry workshop, The Waters. Recent poems have appeared in The 2River View, Anderbo, Apparatus Magazine, The Cortland Review, Soundzine, Umbrella, and elsewhere. She loves French food and wine, and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.