Sarath Reddy
Image by Fernando Cabral from Pixabay
Sarath Reddy enjoys writing poetry which explores the world beneath the superficial layers of experience, searching for deeper meaning in his experiences as an Indian-American, as a physician, and as a father. Sarath's poetry has been published in JAMA, Off the Coast, and Please see Me. His work is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Poetry East, Hunger Mountain, and Cold Mountain Review. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Prometheus
Third admission in as many months
skin fluorescing yellow, shrunken liver
floating in a sea, belly stretched so taut
that he begged to be siphoned,
We pumped him full of medicines to burn
away the fog, rescue him from his island.
Each day began with the fire of bourbon
or brandy trickling down his throat, torching
everything within him and outside him,
a charred wasteland longing for wildflowers,
thirsting for sunlight.
The air swirled with confused rants,
a man who had bartered soul for spirits,
awoke on Christmas reeking of vodka
and vomit, and what mattered most in his life
had emptied her closet, a jar of petty cash, grabbed
the car keys and vanished into a silent night.
He awaited judgement
of needles wading into streams, wrists
restrained to bed rails, tremulous
like Prometheus chained to rock
an eagle pecking at his liver, devouring it,
marvelling as another grew back in its place.
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