At 42 years old, married and in good health, some doctor sucker punched Ephraim Scott Sommers with a diagnoses of type 1 diabetes, a chronic autoimmune disease that requires constant monitoring: “a half-inch needle which is, right now, buried in my soul and giving me an important but boring reading of my current blood sugar.” The parade of medical equipment and doctor jargon is comical, but the very real threat of dying stains each page of Diabetic Gumdrops.  Even with medical insurance and a loving wife, the destructive force of this disease is shown to be awesome and absurd, a war that will likely continue until his death, and this battle requires advanced weaponry: “Dexcom, G-7, Patch, and Sensor…heart pills and vitamins and insulin pens and monitor kits and boxes of glucagon.”

Even if you don’t have diabetes or cancer or AIDS, Sommers reminds us, bluntly, how you “are going to die of something you don’t want to believe is wrong with you.”  

A bus driver once told Sommers, “laughing and with one tooth busted up front…that poetry is just veiled bitching about the world,” and Sommers does grumble; nobody wants a life-threatening, chronic disease. But the heft of these poems shows how coping with diabolical obstacles can be an act of grace, even beauty.  In his words: “stop thinking of your disease which is always the choosing of what might be coming over the paradise that already is.” Somehow, Sommers stays suspiciously positive throughout these poems: “I have come to gratitude for every needle even so of course I say praise these holy needles / while my blood beats into the tiny vials.”

Understandably, when writing about blood sugar levels and glucose, these pages are food obsessed. Sommers presents a smorgasbord of treats that, for him at least, will only be tasted in memory: “big, blimpy, rice-swollen burritos…squid ink capellini…white chocolate doves in a wildflower glaze in warm plums lathered in raspberry honey…and suicide slushies.” Some of his new, doctor-approved sustenance, is better to read about than to experience: “non-fat butter…dextrose biscuits…cottage cheese and celery and Ezekiel bread.” Eat well or die trying.

Sommers shares, in many beautiful poems, this message: When we automatically / unconsciously associate disease with fester and rot, our thoughts can expedite suffering and decay. Injecting optimism into our daily thinking may not cure what ails us, but the stories we feed our minds can profoundly influence how we cope with life’s bloody curveballs.

Buy the book—nourish your goddamn soul.

– Dustin Hyman