For OW

Michigan has a doctor and the doctor has a daughter that loves him.
“I am going to be a doctor, too,” she tells him.
He and his wife are so so proud.

She is studying.
He calls her home on the weekends, and they talk.
Medicine, politics, world war.
He loves her mother’s mind in her.

War breaks out overseas.
“I am going over there,” she tells him.
He and his wife are so so proud.

There is a picture they have.
She is crisp and brave in her nurse’s uniform.
Weeks later she is dead.
A falling shell has killed her dead.

Michigan has a doctor and the doctor has lost his daughter.
He blames himself.
His wife blames him too.
“You and your politics,” she cries.
“Me and my politics,” he cries.

He can’t look at his wife.
She reminds him of his daughter.
She can’t look at her husband.
He reminds her of her daughter.

First they fight.
Then they grow still.

Michigan has a doctor and the doctor is a drunk.
He moves to the city and drinks, drinks, drinks until he is poor.
He tries to drink himself to death.

A mad man finds him in a bar.
“There is a man,” he says, and shows the doctor a gun.
The doctor sews the man up, his hands shaky, shaky.
The man lives or close enough.
A man pays him, and he drinks, drinks, drinks.

Michigan has a doctor and the doctor is corrupt.
Never rich enough to die, never poor enough to live.