The Man in the Iron Lung

By Mark O'Brien 1949–1999 Mark O'Brien

I scream

The body electric,

This yellow, metal, pulsing cylinder

Whooshing all day, all night

In its repetitive dumb mechanical rhythm.

Rudely, it inserts itself in the map of my body,

Which my midnight mind,

Dream-drenched cartographer of terra incognita,

Draws upon the dark parchment of sleep.

I scream

In my body electric;

A dream snake bites my left leg.

Indignant, I shake the gods by their abrupt shoulders,

Demanding to know how such a vile slitherer

Could enter my serene metal shell.

The snake is punished with death,

The specialty of the gods.

Clamp-jawed still in my leg,

It must be removed;

The dream of the snake

Must be removed,

While I am restored

By Consciousness, that cruelest of gods,

In metal hard reluctance

To my limited, awkward, déclasé

Body electric,

As it whispers promises of health,

Whooshes beautiful lies of invulnerability,

Sighs sibilantly, seraphically, relentlessly:

It is me,

It is me.

March, 1988

Source: The Man in the Iron Lung (Lemonade Factory Press, 1997)

Biography

Poet and journalist Mark O’Brien was born in Boston and raised in Sacramento, California. He contracted polio when he was six years old; the disease left him paralyzed from the neck down, and he used an iron lung to breathe. He earned a BA and an MA from the University of California–Berkeley. An advocate of independent living for disabled people, O’Brien was a frequent contributor to newspapers, writing columns on such topics as . . .

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