Elizabeth Gargano: Villanelle — Song of the MRI

Into the white tube, the silver coffin
I shoot. The machine rumbles and creaks
and in the floating distance, cathedral bells

clang in a city of towers where rain falls
and a clock tocks in the square, a phantom city
inside the white tube, the silver coffin.

Two-track lighting pulses and blurs,
two blind comets across my bland, plastic sky
over the floating distance of cathedral bells.

Light tangles in the brush of my eyelashes,
wind whistles through a ridge of dark trees
inside the white tube, the silver coffin,

and high in the quaking branches, a wasp’s nest
falls. Hissing, buzzing, they swarm through
the floating distance, louder than cathedral bells,

capturing, for a still moment, the walled city
in its skull-white shell, until, with a lurch, I slide
out of the white tube, the silver coffin: lost in
the floating distance, one last cathedral bell.

—

Copyright 2016 Elizabeth Gargano