At the Cardiologist’s

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, was published in 2019 by Sibling Rivalry Press.