Jobs for All
Since we started learning online, everybody’s a doctor.
Amazon’s out of stethoscopes and thermometers, and we’ve
had to run up our own white coats on sewing machines that
haven’t been used since our grandmothers’ day. We’ve
learnt the Latin names for everything from boredom to
celebrity fly fishing, we drink too much expensive whisky,
and our writing is an unintelligible scrawl. Some of us
specialise in children, brains, lower limbs, or the organs of
regeneration. Some raise unrealistic expectations of a full
recovery, some raise important concerns, and some just
raise their fees for private consultations before raising
another glass of that twinkling single malt. Some, naturally,
raise the dead, and they have their own specialist
conferences in elegantly ruined seaside hotels. Then there
are vets, tending to trauma on the edges of extinction,
catching birds as they fall from the smoke-filled sky,
identifying loss by the curves of broken bones and cracked
teeth, suturing heartbreak with garden string and tears,
making aching TV documentaries and penning spin-off
bestsellers in unreadable dog Latin. I chose to specialise in
the inanimate and regularly check the pulse of sand, the
temperature of scorched earth, the worrying groan at the
root of rock. Per istam sanctam unctionem, I begin, but
words tie my tongue like a tourniquet, so I just stick a Band-
Aid cross on the newest eruption and phone the psych ward
for further instructions.
The Seaside Line
I find my feet in a crowd, walking the other way as if we’ve
never met. They’re wearing plastic sandals from a Cornish
beach, cat’s eye green at scraped at the heels, and behind
them drags a wheeled tartan case with an ineffectual
padlock. Inside is a brass telescope, an inflatable donkey –
NOT TO BE USED AS A BUOYANCY AID – and a sheaf of
flags for former colonies of a sick and shrinking empire.
The air smells of coronation mugs and gun oil, and it’s so
tempting to get political that I can barely keep from burning
my union jack swimming trunks, but I’ve nothing else to
wear, people are staring, and my feet are striding through a
door which looks like it says NO EXIT, though when a
passing donkey hands me a brass telescope I see that it’s
NOT EXIST. The donkey shrugs, as if to say That’s no sort
of grammar but the meaning’s pretty unequivocal, places a
forehoof in the crook of my elbow, and leads me to a red,
white, and blue door marked SEE.
Absolute Zero
Ice shouldn’t be here. It shouldn’t be dressed down for the
weekend, and it shouldn’t be warming its palms by the fire.
I’m half listening to its story, though at the same time I’m
scrolling through my phone, checking emergency contacts
in case of escalation. Ice is saying something about
misdiagnosis and demands on local services; it’s telling me
how people are afraid of slipping, and how they think they
know more than experts in the field. I’m nodding, but
whether it’s in agreement or exhaustion is open to
interpretation, and my finger’s sliding across the freezing
screen that leads to nothing but link after link, until it comes
to one of those Site Under Construction pages that used to
be everywhere in the 90s. And while I’m thinking this, ice
has reached the nub of the problem and moved on, ordering
groceries it won’t eat, clothes it won’t wear, and books it
won’t read, charging it all to my credit card. Outside,
nothing is happening, and maybe nothing has ever
happened, but ice should be out there in the weather, where
it belongs, dressed up dapper in low sunlight; and I should
be anywhere but here, my phone turned off, talking to
anyone who’ll listen, coining new words to describe my
relationship to ice.
____________
Oz Hardwick is a European poet and academic, whose work has been widely published
in international journals and anthologies. His tenth collection, A Census of
Preconceptions, will be published by SurVision Books in 2022. To keep the cat fed, Oz
is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.
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