Invalid — Summary

Dave BontaAnxious

in the morning of my disease I itch and pimple

sickness came for me in a pair of plain white gloves

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

Two short stanzas, two very different ways of picturing illness. In the first, the speaker is physical and blunt: "I itch and pimple." The body is irritating, a little embarrassing, and the verb "pimple" turns a noun into something that happens to you, which makes it feel almost comic. The phrase "the morning of my disease" is odd too. Morning usually suggests a fresh start, so it hints that being ill is its own strange beginning, a new stretch of life with its own routines.

The second stanza shifts to a image. Sickness "came for me" like a visitor or an official, wearing "plain white gloves." Gloves suggest politeness, formality, even a servant or an undertaker, and they also suggest care taken not to touch anything directly. Illness becomes courteous and impersonal at once.

The mood is wry and unsettled. The speaker seems to hold fear at arm's length with dry understatement, and the title "Invalid" quietly plays on the word's other meaning: not valid, not counted.

Read also

More by Dave Bonta

All poems
ContemplativeDave Bonta

Plea bargain

I hear half a beat of drum to serve time have half a hope in the meantime praise God
DreamyDave Bonta

Cibola 3

I awake in the dark and shake free of sheets & blankets, of down-filled quilt. The rituals of waking– the long, hot shower, the coffee–give
ContemplativeDave Bonta

In good light

On a maple’s pale bark, a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks from a wandering snail? Green islands of moss