Clara B. Jones


Poem In 3 Parts

1. Aggressive Treatment Is Permitted By Law

I can't treat your disease...hormones or artificial preservatives won't make you feel better & i am responsible since your memory is poor—it's not something you could have foreseen...someone has to know you need help so don't have dental procedures—they'll increase your risk of bleeding like a dangerous man calling a hedge-fund trader...what's wrong with you?...why are you in the hospital?...it's almost cold & flu season but faking it won't guarantee you're holding all the cards...you're lying but you still have a chance to own it like the bad guy eating a healthy family dinner or an alcoholic leaving rehab...tumors are real & erbitux.com will give you long-lasting relief after you've had a beer—like Corey Booker elected to the Senate after living in the ghetto or like having Veal Picatta after eating hot dogs for a week...let's be clear...before you got sick the system was working for you though the media gave you a bad reputation...Garofalo always paid with hundreds at Tony's bar though you never used the stuff yourself...tell your doctor about every biopsy if you are not lying...always take care of yourself & keep an eye on the clock—the kids need to know you're OK.


2. Psychotropic Drugs

Exercise in combination with hormones cure a sluggish bladder but your fight with depression isn't over...take the long view...doctors are now treating thought disorders with an eye to the future...don't eat anything hot no matter what they tell you though there's a bar near Prospect Park that serves Sichuan food...more people with four personalities are living full lives but they aren't patients who take pills since we always treat the whole client & weigh the benefits of genetic counseling...we're not just fighting O.C.D....we want a solution to any problem...if you're at higher risk for panic you can order drugs through Medicaid when MRIs show damage to your frontal lobe but if you are struggling with addiction your limbic system must be hyperactive to receive urgent care...a history of mania reduces thyroid size since random generators yield cures & high standards improve clinical results.


3. Neurogenesis

The latuda.com commercial showed a woman with deep depression with a handsome and devoted husband and a perfect little daughter all surrounded by a picket fence and grass as green as Edmund's emerald ring...the woman seemed domestic and almost normal—not a victim or stereotype of someone with low serotonin levels like Nadia Savchenko saying Putin is another sort of illness...you need to drop Cortex Studies from every curriculum since Neuroscience is not about brains but about toucans flying over your casa beside the Andira that never bloomed...how did you study phenotypes with high throughput methods if Obama's legacy was as fragile as a signal to noise ratio?...you didn't need stock quotes only passwords though gmail.com is the safest site in virtual space... you were helping her rise to the next level and it didn't seem to bother her at first since cyberfeminism was emerging as a political system when you looked at one data point... you penetrated closed markets when consumers bought your products and the medical industry blocked every pathway to good health—like the genetics counselor making the most of your poor prognosis.

Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Silver Spring, MD (USA). As a woman of color, she writes about the “performance” of identity, alienation, and power and conducts research on experimental poetry, as well as, radical publishing. Clara is author of three chapbooks, and her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous venues.
 
 
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