Matthew Siegel

‘fox goes to the fox hospital’

And look there he is back in the hospital
in the easy blue dressing gown, at this facility
with a delicate floral print on the walls.
He’d always had an affinity for flowers.
And healthy yet being repaired, he is back
in this gown and it is like an old costume
pulled out of a locked trunk in the attic
of bad dreams. In the gown he feels naked,
notices his softness, how his sex has never seemed less willing
to rise. As if there could be such a cause in this place.
He is healthy but writing a poem.
It is called ‘going back to the hospital’ and written
in lowercase, most notably the first person ‘I’
which so often had stood properly capitalized
but for some reason today feels diminished.
He’s writing a poem called ‘going back to the hospital’
but really he wishes he could draw a comic
featuring a small mammal version of himself.
His animal would be a fox, he decides, and promptly
changes the title to ‘fox goes to the fox hospital’.