Flavian Mark Lupinetti

Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in About Place, Barrelhouse, Briar Cliff Review, Cutthroat, december, Sport Literate, Writers Resist, and ZYZZYVA. Mark lives in New Mexico.

Rejection Speech

that you can’t trust a teenager
is a lesson I learned the hard way
because I trusted Tommy who was
thirteen when I met him but with
the physique of a four-year-old
thanks to a heart the size of a
half deflated beachball and equally
robust at pumping blood and although
a lot of people said he was too sick
for me to do anything I transplanted
his heart and by the following spring
he played Little League–not well;
it turns out that hitting a curve ball
can’t be transplanted–and over the
following years he took his antirejection
drugs and made his appointments
and developed a side hustle talking
to civic groups to raise money
for the hospital until five years later
when he decided taking meds
sucked so he quit taking them
(rejection, obituary) and if Tommy
was the only teenager who did this
that would be tragic enough but Charlene
age 14 did the same thing because
the drugs grew hair on her forehead
and her back–talking Lon Chaney
wolfman pelt here–and Derek at 16
moved out of his mom’s house
to live in the trunk of a friend’s car
before giving up and that shit happens
over and over and over so don’t say a
fucking word to me when I transplant
kids who are mentally challenged
because one thing I can count on is
they’re supervised so closely they never
miss a dose and the other thing I can
count on is I never have to ask myself
should I have put that heart into somebody else