‘Alotta Lip About my Hip’ and Other Hip Replacement Poetry by Jeff Kemper

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Alotta Lip About my Hip

Alotta lip about my hip
On paper, phone, computer-drive.
The new one at my femur’s tip
Has generated verbal jive
Beyond my wits. I can’t contrive
The need for queries they should skip.

I’ve been forever asked of these:
“How is your pain? Drive you insane?”
“What is your birthday, if you please?”
“How are your bowels? Please ascertain!”
“Of breathing woes do you complain?”
Oh, Geez! Ask me no more, Louise!

And though I answer, ‘tis a chore
To scatter answers to and fro!
And just then, when the question-store
Went bare, I heard one final go:
“Now have you any questions?” “No!
Because you’ve asked them all before!”

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I Got Another Hip

I got another hip that gave me pain.
Now that makes two, if figures do not lie.
And listen here, I certainly disdain
The way I feel (Life sometimes goes awry!)
Until I heal. The pain meds make me high—
I swoon in stupefaction, half insane.

One day I’m fine; the next, I feel like crap;
The next, I’m well again—until I’m not.
And so goes healing’s harsh, tumultuous trap
Until I get to where I think I ought.
This stupefying Gordian-like knot
Will hopefully upon its own unwrap!

But in the meantime I am mystified
As though the elements of axial
And appendicular constructions chide
Each other, hosting tensions tactual.
Say I to me, “Suspend this push and pull!”
Distress abates—their next combat they mull!

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Jeff Kemper has been a biology teacher, biblical studies instructor, editor, and painting contractor. He lives in York County, Pennsylvania.