Bad Survivalist Poetry: “All My Ducks” by Charlie Brice

I sit across from the sweet Black woman
at my doctor’s office. She’s checking me out
after a visit where I, once again, dodged the bullets
of mortality, bobbed and weaved to avoid morbidity’s blows.

I love looking at the tchotchkes on her desk, especially
the little plastic ducks along the front of her computer.
I always say, Looks like you’ve got your ducks in a row,
something she must hear a hundred times a day
from old fat guys who flirt with her a little, like me.

Today, something different: on her desk rests
a rubber human heart. It takes my breath away.
It’s a little smaller than a baseball. My heart leaps
into my mouth. I can’t speak. Are you really that small,
I silently ask it. I touch my chest, realize the rubber
heart is the actual size of the throbbing sinew inside of me.

Those videos and diagrams we’ve seen on documentaries
and in textbooks are grossly magnified. You’re so tiny, I say
silently to the rambunctious muscle in my chest.
Look at all the work you do!

At home I consult Google as the ancients consulted the Oracle
of Delphi. I find that, on average, my 75-year-old-heart has beat
2,838,240,000 times, give or take a few flutters when I fell
in love and the wild, rapid, drumming it performed when
I heard the words, It’s a boy!

Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His ninth full-length poetry collection is Tragedy in the Arugula Aisle (Arroyo Seco Press, 2025). His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, Chiron Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere.

Image: facebook.com

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