Our CPA has prostate cancer and Parkinson’s disease. I have pancreatic cancer. Michelle’s husband has polio. We’re looking for others who might round out our “P” club: someone with psoriasis, pelvic inflammatory disease, pinkeye, pneumonia. We’ll only meet at parks, and we’ll eat pastries, pies, pizza, peanuts, pears, and passionfruit. We will piss and moan, procrastinate, prevaricate, and pontificate. When one of us is cured, or dies, we’ll throw a party.
This excellent alliterative prose poem is from The Extra Year, a book of prose poems, by Jory Post (Quanah, Texas: Anaphora Literary Press, 2019). The poem initially appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review.