death count of the ghost doctor

By Zoë Luh

Issue 50 • Fall 2024 • Poetry

the doctor presses on my abdomen, smirks, and says: “those are your ribs hun”
I say I am aware of my anatomy

I turn translucent and you can see every organ, my blood racing through veins/ I
reach beneath my ribs/ and pull out my spleen/ ask him to examine it/ I lay all my
thoracic organs out on the exam table/ brush my fingertips over the delicate shapes/ and
my lips burst with fire/ I can see my heart reflected in the doctor’s eyes/ along with terror/
without speaking I tell him to do his job/ I tell him to figure out where my pain stems
from/ and I know I have assigned an impossible task/ because he cannot see the
lineage of layers in my tissue/ these ghost eyes are not made to see/ the steel of my
ancestors/ the fire under my tongue and coals generations deep/ this ghost doctor cannot
see his own eyes reflected in my pain

he diagnoses me with atelectasis/ or the collapsing of a lung/ he tells me to take ten deep breaths every hour/ smirks and writes on his clipboard/

I count my breaths as I return my organs to their rightful spots/

the steel instruments begin to glow/ and the room takes on the light of the moon

I breathe out and memories exhale from my lips/ fill the room/ make the air heavy

iii

his ghost eyes cannot comprehend all that lays before him

I inhale all the light in the room/ exhale my pain

the ghost doctor screams in fear/ as the memories envelop him

when they wash away/ all that is left is a lab coat and blank nametag

vii

the room glows with soft light/ and hums

viii

I smile and the air floats again

I smile and the room fills with music

I smile and my lungs fill with a thousand stars/ and when I exhale/ a new
constellation is born

Zoë Luh

Zoë (they/she) is a queer, disabled, mixed Chinese-American poet and artist currently living on unceded Tiwa lands. They graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Comparative American Studies, and a minor in Studio Art. She published her first book of poetry, [and time erodes like thunder], with Assure Press in 2020, and has since been featured in In Between Spaces, a disability-centered anthology with Stillhouse Press. Their work also appears in literary magazines such as The Vital Sparks, Pile Press, Wild Roof Press, and soon in American Literary Review.

Nadia Bongo

Nadia Bongo is a teaching artist and translator. She holds a PhD in French Language and Literature from Aix-Marseille Universite. Her work has appeared in Apex, African Voices, and Litro online, Solstice, The Citron Review, Taos journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. She has earned a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship and a Boston Writers of Color’s grant. In 2023, Nadia co-directed an experimental short film supported by the University Open Air program presented by Brooklyn Public Library. Across disciplines, her work is about places, belonging, and strangeness, to encourage people to accept their composite realities and identities.