The Early Black Death Symptoms

Poetry by Tom Holmes

The day the sky and lake

are equally warm, there forms,

below your navel, a lump.

You push it down and hope

it disappears. Instead you vomit

knots of blood and bile

and pass out. You see your ghost

on a leafless, flaming tree

hanging by its nose.

You sweat. You breathe

like a demon pierced

your lungs with a fiery spear.

The house is quiet, except

for the fluttering fleas

and your wife’s gurgling throat.

In the lord’s courtyard,

a jester chases a rooster,

the poet plays a mandolin.

They are unaware of ghosts,

burning trees, demons, the fleas.

The cook prepares a dinner of fish

that flew from the tepid lake.

The couple’s fleas take flight.

Dinner will soon vomit.

*Excerpt from Tom Holmes’ virtual micro-chapbook Yersinia pestis for Idiots: A Primer for the 14th Century Plague Doctor.

BIO: For over twenty years, Tom Holmes is the founding editor and curator of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. Holmes is also the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including The Book of Incurable Dreams (Xavier Review Press) and The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013, as well as four chapbooks. He teaches at Nashville State Community College (Clarksville). His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: thelinebreak.wordpress.com/. Follow him on Twitter: @TheLineBreak