And for this I’m grateful. The scene:
I’m in my convalescent’s nest—a corner of the sofa.
Floral pajamas, oily roots. The pain refers
into my shoulders, as they foretold. A flash
of the anesthetist: This will feel cold. Your face

will prickle. A male voice: She’s out. Let’s do this.
Now, in the weeks between
visits to the theater, I want nothing
to do with human drama. Spare me the pathos,
the redemption arc. What do I want? That’s easy.

Meataxe logic. Justice in its roughest
approximation. I want boots crunching across broken glass,
I want someone to throw themselves from a skyscraper
onto a helicopter, I want atomic laws
to be a surmountable inconvenience,

and the plot incidental, motivations
paper thin. Good merciful god, I want to watch things
explode. Is a little gelignite
too much to ask? And then cued up like a gift
is the filmography of Jason Statham. I am touched

by the solicitude of the algorithm.
One after another I consume them. I cannot
get enough. Mafioso, secret agent, marine
or criminal, it doesn’t matter, in every incarnation
he’s the same, plus or minus kevlar,

beret, turtleneck. I watch
as he dispatches henchmen, wisecrackers,
kingpins, I watch him plunge a harpoon
into the eye of a prehistoric mackerel and am filled
with something I recognize as tenderness—

there is nothing in this world, shaky
on its tectonic plates, as reliable as Jason Statham
passing a sharp instrument
through the soft tissue of his enemies. One nurse to another
when they thought I was asleep: Check it out,

her urine’s blue. I think of my own grandfather
who died with gangrene
at the tips of his fingers, I think of his same tough-guy shtick:
I’ll cry tomorrow.I’ll cry tomorrow,
I say to myself in the bathroom mirror,

or sometimes, There’s no crying
in baseball. It doesn’t work, but never mind,
Jason Statham is bare-knuckled or French-kissing
or with a semiautomatic in each hand.
He puts his fist through something pliable

and I am dulcified. He asks nothing of me
I cannot give, that I am not prepared
to give, and for this I’m grateful. I remember
my surgeon, tanned and personable, standing
over my bed, recommending

Peru, saying Have you been? Have you stood
on Machu Picchu? No, I said, but I’ve heard
it’s beautiful, though Jason Statham
would have said it better. He’d have replied
in the manner of a genuine geezer, spinning a toothpick

between his teeth. When they pulled
the drainage tube from my abdomen it felt
alive, sliding like a python. I’ve
never gasped like that before. I’m sorry, said the nurse,
I’m so sorry. We looked at each other,

equally horrified, the tube still in her hand. Whatever else
they decide to excise, here is
my promise: if I can’t fight through this
as casually as Jason Statham,
I will at least imitate my favorite

of his enemies. I will slip into anesthesia
as though it were the Mariana. I will zip
myself into a suit of deep gray neoprene
and glide through this ocean, hostile, endless.
The dark water will part in my presence.