Prince Bush

In Lieu of a Doctor’s Note for MATH 115


I thought, only a vulture could carry me. 
I was alone with Alone, a loneliness 
Angle or angel, dependent on e, which 
Is irrational, infinite, transcendental, 

And imaginary i, know 

The abscess and untreated 
Strep gave me half a week left,
Half a throat left, half a tube left, 

Needle and nurse missing tonsils, 
So they drove the syringe over there, 
Missing a lump that must be bowling

Ball bulk, the ankle of it up-and-down-
Feet focused, I guess. I could taste,

Smell the medicine, this honeypot sting
Operation with sting-
Rays’ mouths and gills 
Breathing and breeding through the glass
With gray, flat smiles, shouting sting 

Ray, the nock to arrowhead 
A negative length, sits col-
Linear with good memory, the col the bottom 

Of where I am—I can’t see the peak

Straight. For symmetry, who wouldn’t 
Want the same for me then

Prince Bush reads poetry for TriQuarterly and lives in Nashville, TN. He was a Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets fellow, and he graduated from Fisk University as an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar.