She asked me if she took one pill for her
heart and one pill for her hips and one pill
for her chest and one pill for her blood
how come they would all know which part
of her body they should go to

I explained to her that active metabolites in each
pharmaceutical would adopt a spatial configuration
leading to an exact interface with receptor molecules
on the cellular surfaces of the target structures
involved.

She told me not to bullshit her.

I told her that each pill had a different shape and that
each part of her body had a different shape and that
her pills could only work when both these shapes could
fit together.

She said I had no right to talk about the shape of her
body.

I said that each pill was a key and that her body was
ten thousand locks.

She said she wasn’t going to swallow that.

I told her that they worked by magic.

She asked me why I didn’t say that in the first place.

.

© Glenn Colquhoun
~ published in Playing God, Steele Roberts, 2002

Reproduced here with permission.

—

About the Poem:

On September 16, in a post titled Reflections on What I’m Reading, I talked about poet and doctor Glenn Colquhoun’s speech on “The Therapeutic Uses of Ache” to the Royal College of General Practitioners in Wellington in 2009—and how re-reading it “reminded me all over again what an acute observer Glenn Colquhoun is and how I need to read his collection Playing God again, and maybe even share some of the poems with you of a Tuesday.”

Playing God was published in 2002 to a level of critical and popular acclaim not often afforded poetry collections, receiving the Montana Award for Poetry and the Montana Readers’ Choice Award at the 2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

The collection draws on Colquhoun’s experience of medicine, a profession in which doctors are often accused on “playing God”, and reflects humour, pathos, and the frustration and heartbreak of a calling where:

“On the seventh day bacteria were made resistant to antibiotics.
New viruses were discovered in Africa. The drinking age was
lowered. In a regular column the British Medical Journal reported
a large increase in deaths attributed to earthquakes, pestilence,
lightning, famine, and flood.”
~ from 1. Creation

and the doctor

“Contrary to popular opinion
I cannot raise the dead.”
~ from 7. Myths

And where

“All miracles here
are usually performed
by various members of
the domestic staff.”
~ from 3. Performing miracles

As you may guess from these quotes, I have quite a few poems in Playing God bookmarked—and had corresponding difficulty in deciding which poem to feature as today’s Tuesday Poem.

In the end, I chose “She asked me if she took one pill … “ because it is one of the few poems I have read that made me laugh out loud on first reading. But who was I laughing at: the patient, the doctor, the system, myself as the reader? One of the things I love about this poem is its layers of humour, tinged with irony, and driven by that acute observation that characterises Glenn Colquhoun.  And because I didn’t feel that I was laughing at anyone; I was laughing with everyone. I still grin every time I re-read it.

About the Poet:

Glenn Colquhoun is a doctor, poet and children’s writer. His first poetry collection, The Art of Walking Upright, won Best First Book of Poetry at the 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2003 he won the Poetry Category and also became the first poet to be awarded the coveted Montana Readers’ Choice Award, both awards for Playing God. He has written several children’s books and has been the convener of the New Zealand Post Book Awards. In 2004, Colquhoun was the recipient of the prestigious Prize in Modern Letters.