The
doctors don’t use the word “cancer”,
they
circle around it, instead,
but
it sounds and looks like cancer to me,
what
they are showing me on the x-ray,
cells out of control, a cluster of
them like a sac of fish eggs
in
the transference of x-ray light and shadings,
and
it’s in a bad place,
at
one point along my right hip
switching
to my right jaw,
We’d have to take out
some of your skull.
There
was a long pause before the conversation,
one
doctor starting to tear up,
getting
up from her desk,
bringing
over the emotional support animal,
the
black bulldog who ran over from the neighbor’s
yesterday.
The
examining room closes in during that pause,
and
closes in more as the two doctors
talk
around cancer.
They
can’t offer me options, hope,
surgery
just won’t work.
I
remember pain in my hip,
in
my jaw.
Later,
we’re all in a commercial,
me
in a scarf, living life to the fullest
in
my last months,
praise
from my doctors about my bravery,
being
inspiring,
a
message about this full,
final
time-room.
Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and five chapbooks, most recently, Were-Jag. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Corpus Callosum, Offcourse, The Writing Disorder, Heavy Feather Review, The Antioch Review, Fugue, WAVES, and Borderlands and been finalists in the Northwind Writing Award and contests at Black Fox Literary Magazine and So to Speak. One poem earned an Honorable Mention in the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities Contest and, another, First Place in the Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize. She lives in Laredo, Texas.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
