And here’s Dr. Mootha
ransacking my ballsack, rummaging

in the cheap drawstring,
this flimsy coin purse, the gross

and cozy home
of the family jewels.

Today we break the chain,
my lackluster bloodline.

He numbs the skin, he punctures,
goes digging for a tube.

He hooks it out by its neck
like a master of crochet.

Twice he does this.
Twice he severs the potential

devastator with his sterile scissors,
muzzles the cut worm with a stitch.

He tugs up the skin, and the sack
slurps it back in defeat.

This whole time we talked:
where I’m from, where I’m going.

I’d like to leave the country,
but where to? What will I do to earn

my living? Four years I endured
the micron-thin mercy

of the god of transistors, pit against its whim
which hinges on an endless chain of ifs.

I chose this because what’s the alternative?
Poets don’t make money.

Mootha says he’s too left-brained for literature,
but his daughter loves to write. And I

will never have a daughter to write a poem for —
“You should consider Canada,”

he tells me, gluing my scrotum shut.
“It’s pretty there.”