Human Scale

A poem about medical machines

The above is more-or-less my armpit, in case you’re wondering. It’s a (tastefully, I hope) cropped image taken from the results of my first-ever mammogram. I have officially hit the age of annual screening. The procedure itself was brief and ultimately quite easy (consider this me scolding you to get screened if you need scolding) and I found the machine itself an object of some fascination. It inspired the poem below.

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Human Scale

The human scale
of all this apparatus—
the skin-and-muscle depth
of a syringe’s needle, tip to hub,
the snug core, just wider 
than human hips, human
shoulders (on average) at the center
of every MRI machine, pills
fit to mouth and an easy throat
slide, tubes just narrower than nostrils,
windpipe, foodpipe, and all gauged
for use by human hands, human eyes
and minds. Never had I appreciated
all of this before a sage and gentle 
woman partners me skillfully—
a small step toward, an exhale, a benign
adjustment of my breast 
as if a forearm, a toe, a strand 
of hair—into place, the whole 
front of my body snuggly locked in, 
my arm in dancer’s grace comfort
-ably reaching to the fit, palm
-to-palm, of a rounded rubberized 
handle the perfect human distance 
away and here I am, clasped,
a moving camera arcing, tracing
that invisible golden circle floating
above my (and every) human head, 
taking image after image, the heat 
of my body warming it as I stand 
hugging this machine.

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