the abdominal exam :: rafael campo

Before the glimmer of his sunken eyes,
What question could I answer with my lies?

Digesting everything, it’s all so plain
In him, his abdomen so thin the pain

Is almost visible. I probe the lump
His boyfriend noticed first, my left hand limp

Beneath the pressure of the right. With AIDS
You have to think lymphoma—swollen nodes,

A tender spleen, the liver’s jutting edge—
It strikes me suddenly I will oblige

This hunger that announces death is near,
And as I touch him, cold and cavalier,

The language of beneath the diaphragm
Has told me where it’s coming from

And where I’m going, too: soft skin to rocks,
The body reveling until it wrecks

Against the same internal, hidden shoal,
The treasures we can’t hide, our swallowed gold.