STAGE II LYMPHOMA
thirsty, empty urn.
clinical gossip.
dr. naseem asks me, what are you so
afraid of? i whimper, unvaluable
work. not the swollen, mossy lymph
nodes. not the masses like stones.
not the hourglass of prayers.
not the downpour of diagnoses.
not the cancer tangling my spine.
it’s the work. i don’t know how to
abandon it. to affirm the canine within
the busybody. to unembed myself of
dictator’s hordes. to affix to chiming
needles. i am a tremor of sycamore. for
work, for
suffer for work. can an ecopoetix
of land make accommodations
for skin? a bed of biopsies?
does the land know why i swell?
could i untether myself from
pulsing growths and cancer
work? a gulping apparition
paranoids, a cure for cancer
was already discovered
and disappeared. a friend lights
a wick about war and illness being
the most profitable industries, how
does this knowledge cultivate in me?
uneducated about swollen lymph nodes,
are they charms, craft talks, cunt
descendance, there seems to be more
elixir in not knowing. until
the night sweats. weight loss. fatigue.
is fatigue a word that is meant to be synonymous
with exhaustion? when i say exhausted, why
does the doctor write fatigue?
a jackdaw calls in the yard.
i find jackdaws all day.
i hear the house creek, my dog snores.
GIRLWOUND
my sister’s girl wound,
i no longer kneel to describe it,
a glutton not mine grows inside me,
a plaintiff bullshits, but reels
into the air like a lion’s tooth.
prompt for reals: they/them
gruffing as many sisters as i can,
but, also: warthog’s blood,
a peephole’s snot, and bird lore.
i laugh, but feel surveilled by doctor’s
orders, like i’m objectifying my blood
when i bid her about her blood.
my comrade sprouts new blisters,
the self endeavors a laxative rain.
i hold you in our childhood diss crib.
drive the dead around listening
closely to frog tits, tree rings, war tanks.
welcome to the burial, lawyers, social workers,
friends. help omit this glorious suspect.
even when i eulogize her,
fetishists burp in the courtyard.
how did she word her abuse?
flem from the oboes, spit of the
byelaws, an assembly of assaulters
glimmering in bedbugs, a tribunal
of hounds slapping her scrotum. truth is
i’m still afraid of my father, the
begetter, the mood monster hiding in a
fawn’s coat.
he has written a musical based on a letter i once wrote
to the court absolving him of his guilt. he shows off
childhood pictures of me, when i tootled as girl in my
lace, kiss, lace having growled all that out, i know a
fluke when i see a fluke. i endeavor to chronicle my
sister’s love to my niece, but i forget her voice, like
oblong gnats, like door hinges. how do you describe a
voice you can no longer remember? diana explains,
only a fraction of the sounds we make are audible. i
want to know my sister’s inaudible sounds. i press
my ear to a bitch-made glass and listen.
