Postoperative Instructions
After endoscopic sinus surgery,
It is important to follow these postoperative instructions.
You must irrigate your sinuses twice a day
by injecting a saline solution intranasally.
You may experience bleeding after irrigation.
You may notice that irrigation loosens some debris
long-lodged inside your cranium. You may find dust
from towns you lived in in your twenties,
and residue from smoke-filled punk rock shows
you snuck out to from your house in ‘85.
It’s probably too much to think that in there
lies Jimmy Hoffa’s unknown resting place,
and anyways he’s before your nose’s time.
But other near-forgotten objects might be found:
Flock of Seagulls, floppy disks, Bronson Pinchot,
Powder-blue quilted jumpsuits, the Gypsy Kings—
and perhaps, in an innermost chamber
coiled behind the anterior, or maybe
the posterior, sphenoid bone—
the shared consensus that Nazism is bad.
