Not long ago, I studied medicine.
It was terrible, what the body told.
I’d look inside another person’s mouth,
And see the desolation of the world.
I’d see his genitals and think of sin.
Because my body speaks the stranger’s language,
I’ve never understood those nods and stares.
My parents held me in their arms, and still
I think I’ve disappointed them; they care
And stare, they nod, they make their pilgrimage
To somewhere distant in my heart, they cry.
I look inside their other-person’s mouths
And see the wet interior of souls.
It’s warm and red in there—like love, with teeth.
I’ve studied medicine until I cried
All night. Through certain books, a truth unfolds.
Anatomy and physiology,
The tiny sensing organs of the tongue—
Each nameless cell contributing its needs.
It was fabulous, what the body told.
Rafael Campo, “What the Body Told” from The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of The Next Wave. Copyright © 2000 by Rafael Campo. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc.
Source:
The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of The Next Wave (St. Martin's Press, LLC, 2000)
In interviews Rafael Campo has called himself “a mutt, a mongrel, a kind of happy monster,” referring to the disparate professional and personal identities he has learned to negotiate. Born in Dover, New Jersey in 1964 to Cuban and Italian parents, Campo attended Amherst College and Harvard Medical School. A poet and physician, Campo practices internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical . . .
Continue reading this biography
