"The Chinese Barefoot Doctor’s Manual" by Meryl Natchez

The Chinese Barefoot Doctor’s Manual

I wonder how many of us, long hair parted in the middle
poured over the Chinese Barefoot Doctor’s Manual
by the light of a kerosene lantern,
hoping it was accurate
as we assembled the package
of blankets, twine, cloth diapers and pins,
sleeper, boiled scissors,
wrapped it in newspaper,
tied it, baked it,
and set it on a high shelf,
as we waited for the
unpredictable journey.
Everything we did
needed a handbook then.
So when the head appeared
after more pain than I had
been led to expect,
and Larry rotated
first one shoulder
then the other
and the scrawny body
popped into his arms
just as the handbook said
with an alien beauty
the book hadn’t described
is it a surprise that we thought
we were changing the world?
or a surprise
how the world pushed back
and changed us?

MEryl natchez

Meryl Natchez’s most recent book is a bilingual volume of translations from Russian: Poems From the Stray Dog Café: Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Gumilev. She is co-translator of Tadeusz Borowski: Selected Poems. Her book of poems, Jade Suit, appeared in 2001, and her new book, Catwalk, is forthcoming from Longship Press in Spring 2020. Her work has appeared in The Hudson Review, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, ZYZZYVA, The Pinch Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Lyric, The Moth, Comstock Review, and many others. She is on the board of Marin Poetry Center. She blogs at www.merylnatchez.com.

Headshot: Suz Lipman

Photo Credit: Staff