Fever 103

In ”Fever 103” author describes her own ilness as poem unfolds in the wearied blur of fever – “Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.” Electricity, heat and light are all throughout this poem. The speaker grows increasingly bright, and the fever becomes a metaphor for a force both creative and destructive. Her fever is a light and it consumes her, making her pure, allowing her to reach Paradise. Poem also links the horrors of nuclear attack with her anguish at the betrayal of trust in marriage “Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin.”