Emergency Room Epiphany

morphine dazed

bone                crushed            bleeding

my femur sticks           out of my flesh

a withered                   trunk

of a tree

will someday               grow back

as a calcified                lump

of broken

things. in the emergency room,

a nurse                         looks  after     every bit

of         shattered              glass             lodged in

my face—under the fluorescent

bath of light

she digs my skin

plowing bits

and

pieces

of pain

 Imma save your face, she says

 I think I didn’t deserve this

  —To live, that is

 the nurse sings softly

to my ear. It’s a song

in the tongue of angels

I will never learn

Or forget

 like half a death

Elidio La Torre Lagares holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the author of Wonderful Wasteland and other natural disasters, published by the University of Kentucky Press in 2019 and  shortlisted for the Juan Felipe Herrera Poetry Prize. His poetry collection Aguacerando earned him a shortlist nomination for the Paz Prize for Poetry 2022, an honor co-presented by the National Poetry Series and the Miami Book Fair. He is currently working on a new novel. Also, last year he published his novel Correr tras el viento (Chasing the Wind) with Editorial Verbum, Madrid.