Frank Rubino

Frank Rubino (@frankrubinopoet ) co-hosts a poetry workshop and organizes readings at The Red Wheelbarrow Poets in Rutherford, New Jersey. Rubino’s poems have been published in Thimble, Chaleur, The Aesthetic Apostle, and DMQ Review, and he was the featured poet in The Red Wheelbarrow's 2021 annual journal. The following poem is from his forthcoming poetry book, Frank’s Lunch Service (Lithic Press, Fall 2025).

Siphon Tube (Poem)

My father was hooked up to a siphon tube

through an incision between his ribs, clear, heavy-gauge plastic as thick as my thumb, carrying

            red foam from his lungs.

He grimaced and squirmed, trying to get away from the tube.

A nurse came and marked the fluid level with a Sharpie.

Sharpie is a medical tool.

Can we get this tube out of him?

If they take out the tube, said the nurse, they might have to put it back in; then, Medicaid won’t

            cover it.

My father queued in the hall on a gurney to wait for a test. Doctors and nurses passed around

            him; he suffered with their tube in his side like a Roman spear.

His brain began to go; his beard grew wild and curly; we stood him up, and walked him to his

            bathroom, &, so, I have, in photographs on a special hard drive, Dad’s comeback shave.

He used up the rest of his brain in the mirror

planning exactly how to scrape the lather off his cheek.

I used to drive to Nicolo’s down the block from the hospital and bring their old-fashioned

            cannoli and Italian bread to Dad’s room, to share with my aunt, my mother, and my

            sister.

Let me have some sfogliatelle, the hot ones with the powdered sugar.

You have to put the powdered sugar on when it’s not so hot.

Sfogliatelle is the best pastry in the world.

Yes it is.

Dad hallucinated bread loaves stacked on the windowsill;

he had a lot of anxiety about the bread loaves falling.

The therapist said, When a grieving relative wants that person to get better, they can miss who

            the person IS at that time.

My sister and I appealed to have our father discharged,

& convinced the palliative care review board to approve home hospice.

A therapist who came on weekdays laid out all the hospice drugs on my mother's kitchen table,

and explained that you could tell when the end comes,

because his feet would curl back, and it was true.