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# At the Cardiologist’s
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/at-the-cardiologists/
- Published: 2025-07-28T15:51:48.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-30T17:04:15.000Z
- Description: James Kangas
- Author: James Kangas
- Tags: Poetry, Arts, #decennial

> Joining the other human ruins

> I plop down in a waiting room chair.

> We are all here waiting to hear

> about our faulty pumps, how much

> further to hell they’ve fallen, to hear 

> if we might last a few months, a year 

> or two, although there will be no 

> answers today. There never are. 

> A new drug maybe? A new minimally 

> invasive valve replacement?

> Tell me, doc, what are the chances?

> How many months or days do I have 

> to wait?

  
### James Kangas is a retired librarian and musician living in Flint, Michigan. His poems have appeared in *Atlanta Review*, *New York Quarterly, Penn Review, trampset, West Branch*, and others. His chapbook, [*Breath of Eden*](https://www.amazon.com/Breath-Eden-James-Kangas/dp/1943977666?ref=merionwest.com), was published in 2019 by Sibling Rivalry Press.