22) ICU*
Wolran Kim
A helicopter sent from heaven
Transported his fate to the LDS Hospital
After taking off a sheet at Alta View Hospital
Although just a few small gallstones
A life moves on the operating table, causing numbers on monitors
That hit the limit of conditions
Like Benjamin Button*, an eighty-year-old newborn baby
Has a bare head and his false teeth fallen down from the gum
Everytime the number changes as a morphine needle
His pubic hairs secretly show as the dignity that he had kept for a lifetime
Under the sheet that he had grabbed in pain
Between the gaunt thighs of time
The oxygen respirator, attached with two rubber bands
Is coarser than a plastic toy that the patient begs for life
From an obstacle to speaking, the phlegm, stuck, my throat, written on the paper
The thing that tightened his breath was the phlegm
Flowers are not allowed in this room, and
Only plastic tubes were entangled like a cockpit in a UFO
Everytime the pain goes over the number of morphine
He will call a heavy American woman in a pajama-like uniform
While this room on earth tries to communicate with the stars all night
He has a violent fit of confusion as if someone moved him beyond the river
If rubber tubes that look like chains are removed
Small birds will fly into the sky or come back to the earth by elevator
If a red light turns on meaning he cannot cross the river yet
It says that someone touched the clouds or reached to the sky
At this earth closest to the sky
He will roll the wheelchair with his heavily blue-veined hands
And go into his house like general care
He wishes he will fly to the sky someday without staying at this place
He dreams that he will receive a bonus time if he comes back to this place
A bird that raises his wings again from the ambulance sirens
Is not far from the nest
* ICU: Intensive Care Unit
* Benjamin Button: The main character in the short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1922