On the Subject of Doctors

By James Tate b. 1943 James Tate

I like to see doctors cough.

What kind of human being

would grab all your money

just when you're down?

I'm not saying they enjoy this:

"Sorry, Mr. Rodriguez, that's it,

no hope! You might as well

hand over your wallet." Hell no,

they'd rather be playing golf

and swapping jokes about our feet.

Some of them smoke marijuana

and are alcoholics, and their moral

turpitude is famous: who gets to see

most sex organs in the world? Not

poets. With the hours they keep

they need drugs more than anyone.

Germ city, there's no hope

looking down those fire-engine throats.

They're bound to get sick themselves

sometime; and I happen to be there

myself in a high fever

taking my plastic medicine seriously

with the doctors, who are dying.

Source: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1991)

Biography

James Tate’s poems have been described as tragic, comic, absurdist, nihilistic, hopeful, haunting, lonely, and surreal. His many poetry collections include The Ghost Soldiers (2008); Worshipful Company of Fletchers (1994), which won the National Book Award; Selected Poems (1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award; Distance from Loved Ones (1990); Constant Defender (1983); Viper Jazz (1976); and . . .

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