Scan
Last night I was an acrobat
in flowered sweaty sheets,
dreaded CT scan on my chest,
clothes off from the waist up,
folded into locker #1,
key dangling from my wrist,
gown tied open to the front,
body stretched like a noodle
through the maze of hallway,
engulfed by a hungry white tube,
an open-ended moving prison
eats me alive
feet first,
arms raised back,
two by fours
frame my head
on a small pillow,
trinket of comfort,
twenty years of “breathe in,
hold your breath,
breathe out.”
Gaze riveted,
cloudless sky day,
like September eleven
when the Twin Towers went down.
I silently sing country songs of freedom.
I am imaged.
Escape,
do errands,
shoemaker bangs
taps on my black shoes,
ignore his hammer blows
to my cancer-patient brain.
Twelve noon,
news I dread and have to hear,
“Paula, you are fine.”
Cobalt-blue sky,
sweet smelling mangoes,
lapping water,
paradisiacal restfulness,
sweep this scan out
of my brain’s trap door
with a blood–tinged,
sharp-bristled broom.
In three months time
I walk this tightrope again,
star in the act of staying alive.
(Cancer, Poets Choice, www.poetschoice.in)
Lung Biopsy
From my left breast
a tube,
branchlike,
grows down,
a weeping willow
clinging to the bark of my skin.
My jailor, an air-sucking machine,
on the floor beside my bed
traps me,
its numbered, diagrammatic face
the wall of my cell,
its small aqua window,
bubbling water
to drown in
as air blocks
full-lung inflation.
In blue-green water, I raft
belly down from hospital hell,
to the melody of doctor’s lyric,
“discharged.”
In my dark lung-earth,
nodules, pink, poisonous,
root and grow,
sing “radiation”
like a choir of mushrooms
in a dollhouse sized forest.
I peer down my chest.
Does havoc linger?
I see only the innocence
of a tiny scab.
(https://www.monthstoyears.org/spring-2022-magazine-mode)
That Was The Winter
That was the winter the pandemic hit
like a bat slamming humanity.
Proximity to people,
ill advised,
don’t touch me,
and I won’t touch you.
My worlds closed,
volunteering
at MoMA,
screenprinting,
taking tai chi.
Communicate
by telephone
or electronic device,
strange how
we are barred
from a shared space.
The walls of my apartment move in on me,
threaten to squeeze me
until I am flattened.
How will I inflate?
Am I like
a broken balloon?
Yet I can live
with solitude,
be productive,
write poems and
make collages
that please me.
I find joy,
but also anxiety
for no reason
I can figure,
That’s okay.
I don’t let it stop me.
I am a trooper.
(Hindsight 2020 www.hudsonguild.org)
I Was Eight When We Met
One-hundredth birthday balloon
suspended over her throne
at her daughter’s dining room table
laden with eats.
Centenarian reigns.
Talk, talk, with family and friends.
Mouths like crescent moons in motion,
drink, eat, converse.
I circulate in the dressy, lacy sweater
I knit for summer
and contemplate escape
into the expanse of New York streets.
My lips, teeth and tongue
tolerate blather for an hour,
treasure poets’ words,
not prolonged jabber.
I am the stepdaughter
who has come to care greatly for E,
years of battle, tears and peacemaking.
Her death will leave me bereft.
I dread her irrevocable disappearance
from the west side of Manhattan,
from apartment 28E, from her 917 phone number,
from her periodic despondency
and inordinate good cheer,
from her mantra, “I am doing the best I can.”
Why is my best never good enough for me?
Because I’m me and E is E.
The twain has met.
We emerge hand in hand
at her Nakashima table in the dining area
of the living room with the red wall,
on the Turkish rug
woven in rich reds and blues,
the étagère loaded with crockery and hand blown glass
in which a Tiffany vase stars,
like E, an object of antiquity.
(sadgirlsclublit blog 11/20/22)
Strapped for Serenity
High heeled gold strappy sandal
sobs to deafening honks of traffic
on crowded highway
and deserted sidewalk
NYC’s Chelsea
early Sunday morning.
How did you get here glam-golden-discard?
Was the wearer a three a.m. princess-Cinderella
(now a hologram in our rear-view)
who danced to her death
Saturday night
in club Marquee New York?
Is her slime coated sandal partner
a glittery starlet among squashed
lemons and limes
former friends of tequila and gin?
Her man partner
six foot three
fingers bedecked with
groan heavy silver-laden turquoise rings
spawns brown ponytail
that rivets
down his back like an arrow
hell bent for bull’s-eye.
He holds the leash of a large white dog
in the dentist’s office lobby
Sit, he commands
Good Boy complies.
(I revere its obedience).
I don’t deny
wouldn’t dare to defy
hunky Big Guy
but I am keen
on getting teeth clean
so to hell with grief
Big Guy emerges from dentist’s treatment room
I have wriggled out from under
prophylactic hand of hygienist
scraped, picked at, polished
I clutch my small plastic bag
that contains newly
acquired dental treats
travel size tube of Crest
(though I just returned from Quebec
and plan to go nowhere ever again)
blue toothbrush
Glide floss
that extends like a tightrope
on which I will teeter to
Grand Central shuttle
three blocks south.
Goo goo
says dentist to dog,
and to me Are you dog friendly?
Am I dog friendly
I shout at the top of my teeth?
What’s with this large white dog at the dentist?
Service dog for anxiety?
For anxiety?
This strapping dude
harbors a.m.’s breakfast food
among incisors, canines and molars.
In this anti-cavity filled cave
where teeth click and clatter
where tarter and stain
are old news
decaying gums
no fun
Aghast!
This guy has anxiety
and a dog that tends to it?
Doesn’t Guy’s sheer size force anxiety to
cower, shudder hide
behind tall buildings
crouch in storefront basements?
(I dreamt I was
Lady Paula Gaga
belted notes loud from my larynx
paraded my dare-to-wear frills
to awed audiences
at Club Marquee)
But fears yech, ick
no anxiety-sucker-up dog
footwear halved
receding gums
loss of bone
(dread legacy age and heredity)
Fate directs me to
brush brush brush along the gum line
and bite my words of disdain and wonder.
Visible Ink Anthology 2024 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center