Sure Cure Poem by Jared Carter

On my mother's side of the family there was always this tale
about how my grandfather cured himself of getting poison ivy
by eating it. At Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or other family
gatherings, late at night, when everyone would be sitting around
the kitchen table, talking and eating leftovers, this story

would come up. It still comes up, even now, but nobody
really knows the details. I finally asked my Uncle Henry,
who at the age of eighty was the patriarch of the family.
He said the story was really about him. It was his story,
he was the one who cured himself of poison ivy by eating it.

The rest of them had it all wrong. But it happened long ago.
He was a young man, and when he worked outside, no matter
where he happened to be, he always came down with a bad case
of poison ivy. Than which there is nothing worse on this earth.
Unable to beat this affliction, he decided, one day, to join it.

"I began by eating a single leaf, " he explained. "It was
the worst, most awful substance I have ever tasted in my life.
It gave me a horrible stomach ache. But a few days later
I ate two leaves. I could barely get them down, and I swear
my throat broke out in a rash. But I was determined to go on.

"It took me an entire summer of eating poison ivy leaves
and suffering the consequences - cold sweats, sleeplessness,
itching something awful, rashes I could feel inside my body
but located where they were impossible to scratch. I kept eating.
And noticed, one day, while out picking a mess of leaves

"for breakfast, that it no longer had the power to affect me.
I could rub the vines on my arms, and nothing would happen.
I could lie down in a patch of it and roll back and forth
like a bear, like a tomcat lolling around in a bed of catnip.
I had internalized the problem, and thereby overcome it."

Years after he told me this, just to be on the safe side,
I asked a dermatologist if this were possible. "Absolutely not, "
he replied. I forgot to explain, however, that my Uncle Henry was
an evangelical minister for most of his adult life. I once heard him claim
that as a young man he had devised a way to cure himself of lying.

"I started off very simply, " he explained, "by telling one lie a day... "


First published in Southern Hum.