Scent

By Dr. Michael Salcman

Afterwards, I smell you like hot butter rising

from my thighs,

my hand pollinated with your musk,

and the tack of your underclothes

spouts lavender and lilies of the valley

in my reptilian brain.

Furiously, I drive one-handed to my next stop,

my fingers almost sticky with your smell,

the last trace of your liquor in me

like ECT, like a tree struck

down in an electrical storm

kept twitching by the ozone

released around it,

every axon and dendrite

shaken in its spine

by the memory of you.

Oh, Proust knew why the ancients met eternity

surrounded by unguents and perfumed creams:

even the dead can dream

shaken by such a scent.

(ECT=electroconvulsive therapy)

First published: Comstock Review: 15 (2) Fall 2001

Michael Salcman is a poet, physician and art historian who was born in Pilsen Czechoslovakia, and is a child of the Holocaust and a survivor of polio. The former chair of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland, he is the author of 200 scientific articles and six medical books. His poems have appeared in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Harvard Review, Hopkins Review, Hudson Review, New Letters, and Raritan with six nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Editor of Poetry in Medicine, a popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors, patients, illness & healing, his collections include The Clock Made of Confetti (Nominated for The Poets’ Prize), The Enemy of Good is Better and A Prague Spring, Before & After (winner Sinclair Poetry Prize). Shades & Graces: New Poems was the inaugural winner of the Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize (2020). Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2022.

Lex Lee is a visual artist and illustrator based in London. She mainly works with watercolour, colour pencil, and ink. Her works draw influence from her exposure to East Asian culture during her time living in Hong Kong. She is passionate about challenging her imaginary world through her artworks with soft and gentle colours.

Google Sites

Report abuse