TWO POEMS
by Rishi Doshi
Bruce’s Prescription
Bruce Wayne knew
How to handle hurt
Pain ricocheting off plated chest
Dark cape cloaking the mess left
From days in studious solitude
Driven by attitude and subtle rage
Against the criminal plague
A uniform to mask fear
To reflect it in enemy eyes / a guise
So brittle it shattered every night
Little puzzle pieces scattered
Across the cave
He battled loss
And knew the fight continued
A slave always knows his master
By his laughter
But I bet Batman
Never took Tylenol
Never lay in bed asleep
Dissolving woes in soaked Kleenex
Invincibility refuted
By yellowish sputum
Missing his rounds
To let a hanger wear his coat for the night
Loosen the futility belt
And ask Alfred to make a food run
I bet Batman never ignored
Commissioner Gordon’s call
Closed the drapes on the Gotham sky
And let the signal pass him by
So as I lie here
Wrapped in toasty blankets
Buttered by morning sun
With a comic book to run my responsibilities away
I wonder if today I need to rise
Relieve the hanger of my guise and
Heed the call of my chosen career
Bruce Wayne would know what to do
But no one expects
A hero every day
. . . Do they?
Exposed: to her cadaver
My fingers course
Through rivers of blood
Parched from seasons without rain
A man once despaired
To hold you so close
Yet never could he see what I’ve seen
I must apologize
For not being gentle
But, my silent teacher, wouldn’t you agree
This heartstring of yours
Must snap in the name of our intimacy
And your once loveable idiosyncrasies
I call anomaly
As per the instructions
I commit you to
Bits of fleeting recollection
And my gratitude, dearly departed
May only show when I too am discarded
To lie with decades exposed
A gift preserved in petals
Of desiccated rose
Rishi Doshi, a rising junior at the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine, serves as a poetry editor for the UCSD student-run art and literary magazine.