POEM

Pilling the Man

by Lynn Kozlowski

Poem

Posted February 2, 2001 · Issue 95


The pill - embossed, numbered, perfect -
that corrects the struggles of my lungs
and rules my cough to order

presents a difficult medicament,
keeping my sleepless
vermin on the run,

up and hunting inside me
from room to room
through all my days and nights.

It does me. It does me good.
It does me. It does me good.
It does me good.


Lynn Kozlowski, professor and head of the Department of Biobehavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University, has published poetry in Transatlantic Review; fiction in The Malahat Review, The Quarterly, The Blue Moon Review, Pif, and ELIMAE; verse commentary in Tobacco Control; and empirical research in Science, Nature, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
Andrzej Krauze is an illustrator, poster maker, cartoonist, and painter who illustrates regularly for HMS Beagle, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, Bookseller, and New Statesman.


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Previous Poems

Late Autumn Night in Iowa
by Mitul Sarkar (Posted January 19, 2001 · Issue 94)
Winter Uplands
by Archibald Lampman (Posted December 22, 2000 · Issue 93)
Needles of the Kyrie
by Allen C. Fischer (Posted December 8, 2000 · Issue 92)
Octopus
by Arthur Clement Hilton (Posted November 24, 2000 · Issue 91)
Memory
by John Stone (Posted November 10, 2000 · Issue 90)
Barnacles
by Jack Coulehan (Posted October 27, 2000 · Issue 89)

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