Rachel Morton
Hand-Built Clay
Inspiration Piece
Ashley Seitz Kramer
Response
FEVER/ISH
…………for Ignaz Semmelweis, 1818-1865
He is with a patient now—a woman wet
…with fever & flooding & there is
blood & soon a child will wail inside
…the vellum walls. What you have heard
about Ignaz is true. He is a doctor,
…a good one, sickened by the sickness.
Listen to the slow sound of the body
…unlocking. The Savior of the Mothers
holds a key too small to see. (Only
…the truth is smaller.) Ignaz remembers
stocking the shelves in his father’s grocery,
…the weight of one can in his young
hands. This is how he learned to count & now
…he counts the dead—hundreds each year
& holding & look how low he holds his head.
…What is the weight of a single death & how
to know Ignaz is right? His colleagues are
…afraid, but mostly they are angry. Never under-
estimate the ill effects of accusation. In the asylum
…there is emptiness, the kind that no one cures.
In the asylum there is darkness & in the world
…there is the same. Dark enough for a woman
to mistake her husband for an evil man. Dark
…enough for a man to become his own stone
shadow. What you have heard about Ignaz
…is true: he has died from his wounds.
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