“Breathless Astonishment” © Bill Wolak

 

Barium Enema

Pennywise croaked from deep inside my ass “down here we all float,” I told Tona, Dave, and Jen, regarding the balloon device inflated to keep me packed with fluid and contrast. The balloon. It came from Party City, I said.

Posturing is easier after the digestive tract is drained and the balloon deflated. Movement, too, although not bowel. That will come later, after the reversal surgery.

The joking doesn’t account for the coldness of the room, the hardness of the table, the largeness of the X-ray machines that dwarf me. The dull ache in my gut as the contrast flows through my intestines. Afterwards, I realize it’s erupted out the split end of my stoma and, indeed, the bag on my abdomen is heavy with liquid.

Where is poetry? I wonder, crouched in the bathroom, barefoot, expelling the rest of the contrast, naked on the toilet. Is there room left in my re-sectioned colon for poetry?

There are no strictures there, according to the tech, no holes among the sutured parts, but I forgot to ask about sestinas or sonnets or maybe even a limerick.

I think of the radiologist, staring at the screen, trying to make sense of the ode to the barium enema brightened by the contrast, nestled in the remnants of my sigmoid colon, hovering there in iambic pentameter, while I grimace in pain and wonder if I’m going to vomit.

 

Paul Shovlin is deeply invested in the belief that poetry should be reclaimed by the masses and applied to even the most mundane aspects of human experience. His intestines are back on the inside of his body now.

Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared recently in the 2024 Dirty Show in Detroit, the 2024 Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, the 2020 International Festival of Erotic Arts (Chile), the 2020 Seattle Erotic Art Festival ,the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018. He was a featured artist in the book Best of Erotic Art (London, 2022).