The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are more than metaphorical and include being clubbed upside the head, a touch of the bubonic plague, a myriad of knives and swords and arrows and spears thrust into various parts of the body, a snake entwining one ankle while a rabid dog gnaws on the other, a scorpion waiting to strike, a spider crawling up the thigh towards the crotch, a bee sting or two, and a toad settling deep inside. Deep inside is where the hurt croaks unseen. Unseen wounds fester while everyone’s attention is on the stiletto in the heart. The heart is said to heal all wounds save the kiss withheld.

 

—Inspired by Wound Man, associated with renown German surgeon Ortolf von Baierland, circa 1420:

 

Wound Man (surgical diagram, ink and parchment, circa 1420 CE);
from Wellcome Library’s MS. 49 (Apocalypse, Section III),
a miscellany of medical materials produced in medieval Germany:
https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b19684915_ms_49_0073.JP2/full/760%2C/0/default.jpg

To access the full manuscript
(and page 73/154 35r, where the above diagram appears):
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/du9ua6nd/items

Publisher’s Note:

See also “The Many Lives of the Medieval Wound Man” by art historian Dr. Jack Hartnell in The Public Domain Review (7 December 2016):
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-many-lives-of-the-medieval-wound-man/

Hartnell is the author as well of a 344-page illustrated history, Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image (Princeton University Press, 2025): https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243481/wound-man

Bob Lucky’s

latest book is a collection of tanka and tanka prose, Careful Not to Startle the Yaks (Cyberwit, 2025). He is also the author of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024); My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019); Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), a winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize; and Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), an honorable mention in the Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards. He lives in Portugal.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Book Review: My Wife & Other Adventures by Rich Youmans in contemporary haibun online (20:3, December 2024)

⚡ Clare MacQueen’s enthusiastic endorsement of My Wife & Other Adventures: “a mondo memoir of tiny poetic narratives infused with [Lucky’s] signature wit, wordplay, and philosophical musings; a handbook of 63 haibun that takes us meandering on a taste tour through the Near and Far East, entertaining as it enlightens...”

⚡ Bob Lucky at Haikupedia.org (September 2024)

⚡ A Tribute and Commentary on Bob Lucky’s new collection, My Thology: Not Always True but Always Truth by Ray Rasmussen in cho (15:4, January 2020)