Do Not Disturb

— after William Carlos Williams

Perhapster on a road
near the hospital,

his car would be drawn
to the curb. Bill Monroe’s

Heavy Traffic Ahead
on the radio,

fragments jotted in No. 2
pencil under a glowing

jimmied Coke
machine thick with swarms

of everywhere night
insects. Tobacco

worn leather smell, so
much depends on little

red notebooks rummaged
among subway tokens

and tortilla chips, ink
in the blood, a stethoscope.