The Holding Room

In a plowed field at the rim 
of the southern Utah desert 
one of those Schnebbley brothers 

found connected bones, 
the skull of a young girl, 
and a set of terrible blue toenails.

Hearing about it, I have nightmares 
in which I stumble across a rib-cage 
still wearing a backless hospital gown. 

The Schnebbley boy’s find 
was a partial skeleton like the one 
hanging in my father’s office closet, 

by which he learned anatomy. 
A kidney floats in a bottle on my dad’s desk. 
A jar of liquid cocaine lies in his little black bag, 

for setting nose fractures. My father leaves 
the lights on, the door ajar, so his patients 
cannot trap him in their comedies.