The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine    

Three Poems

Your Cancer's Spread
Before the Knife
The Right to Cry

***

Your Cancer's Spread

The data knifes quickly through the fog
a tiger springing from jungle camouflage
all other sound ceases
only a staccato synoptically fireworks
terminating in
no pain please

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***

Before the Knife

The biggest question
let’s say

my slip showing

the $64,000 question

is why did I delay the surgery a week

Work
or that other series of obligations
one believes one plays
so vital a role in

Either way
it wasn’t as satisfying
or easy
as I thought it would be

Waiting for the mediastinoscopy
the pathology
and actually hoping
for thoracic surgery

Preoccupied the area
I used to call the back
of my mind
looming larger and larger
as the events arrived
the list was checked down
the days dragged on

More of a conundrum than I thought

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***

The Right to Cry

Is
infected by a stranger
because of a one night stand
more worthy
enabling
enlightening
tragic
than stricken by
stuck by
attacked by

and again
these more tragic
painful
godless
god full
than cirrhosis of the drinker
a smoker’s reaping lung cancer
a bomb exploding on a child

And when we write of dying
does it matter really
or entitle one to more

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Published: June 4, 2007