The Prognosis

There’s a man so attuned

to the Earth, that whenever it

quakes so does he. The doctor

assumes it’s Parkinson’s. The priest?

Seismology stigmata.

Perhaps it’s empathy gone

amok, juiced like

Barroid Bonds.

His mother thought it strange—

as a boy he keeled

to the carpet, as if a bullet

struck him through—

blubbered for dear Old Yeller

till the set was off for good.

He’s much too sensitive.

His father will straighten him out

just like an iron.

It’s obvious that he didn’t—

concussed as concrete plummets

on another’s skull—

half a world away; short of breath

the moment a girl has drowned—

disgorging froths of water

as though his windpipe

had been channelling

Niagara Falls.

There’s no way it could have

happened every time—

he would have been dead for decades,

and this poem would not exist.

Blame it on survival—

that discrepant, two-edged

scalpel.

The nun who bled from her palms

was only grieving for her Christ.

If a hundred-thousand others

bore the laurel of thrusted thorns,

it wouldn’t mean half

as much. When we know the

name of suffering, it wounds us

more than 80 million numbers.

A bhikkhu shrivelled

to bone

after gorging on

all-you-can-eat. 

The panzerotti, triple-

cheese. Raheem Hassan

had starved to death

that very afternoon.

As for the man, his face is

steadily healing from its burns.

They say it happened while he

scooped some Häagen-Dazs,

the instant that a toddler was

being strapped into a stroller—

maybe Gaza or Ukraine—

the mother struck by shrapnel

in her knee, which will give him

a wretched limp

he can’t explain.

Andreas Gripp

January 17, 2026  

RF Photo