They add colloidal gold
to glass, sometimes,
to make that ruby color. They heat it,
render it liquid and viscous, and
when it is just right,
the master glassblower blows into it,
Apparition of ice and stone:
How it swells above the highway,
over small cars and upturned eyes.
It sits on high. Pristine
and remote from me,
exalts me and cuts me
down to size.
Dr. MacDougall measured the weight
of a human soul by placing a man
on a sensitive scale just before death
and weighing him a second time after.
Braid a child’s hair in precise beaded rows
And shave a scalp just enough to access
Skin flap, skull, brain, tumor
Fold over a learner’s fingers to guide a needle
This angle here with this much pressure
Slide together into a hidden space
Three weeks after my mastectomy, I traveled south.
I slung my carry-on bag crosswise over my body
and jostled my way through the airport, the bag
in front of me, to form a barrier, protecting my incision.
I let my arm rest on the bag,
to take the tension off the shoulder.
Bang my shins, my temple on the gritty wall
Of Charlie’s deathbed
Where we do not wrest the truth
But beg him Let us change the (piss-stenched) sheets.
He will not go for tests, insists, denial overarching
Contact: from the Latin for touch.
Isolate: from the Latin for island.
Because your breath had touched mine,
I was obliged to metamorphose
into a separate land mass,
to wear a collar of brine
like a heavy gurgling yoke
My seventh-floor window vibrates,
the room throbs in crescendo
as a rescue helicopter stitches
a curved seam across the sky
bound for Children’s Hospital.
A cluster, I say,
so small – see? I can cover it
with the tip of my finger. Tiny little
calcifications. I show
you the mammogram.
She’s as tall as the easel now,
purple tank top
underneath the apron
falling below her shorts,
My grandmother’s bed bounced high
But I lost the pillow in my hands
Four stitches in the small town
green tiled emergency room
where peering intently into the mirrored light
I was mad because I couldn’t see
Bleach your hair,
get drunk on champagne,
pretend the left and right halves of your face are the exact same,
ignore and deny it, laugh loudly–too loudly,
