Writing

In the summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.

Curiously, I had started writing poetry just a few months earlier. Words began pouring through me — as if they were secret messages from a hidden part of myself.

I’m still in the process of organizing this section, but here are a few poems I’d like to share.

 

METEORA

She was a daughter of the sky
the moon and the stars
whose roaming spirit was kind and brave

She altered dimensions
and broke silences

Behind her
a cosmic hurricane of solar winds trailed indefinitely

She spoke of no one
and no one spoke of her

Her lack of strength
offset by fast oscillating wings

She made stars turn inside out
laughing hysterically at their efforts
to eliminate the darkness

She flew high — yet treaded deep
in the black waters of the universe

She thought big —
yet her feet did not know solid ground

She drank from
the pool of dreams
and hid in cosmic crevices
for months at a time

In the contrast of her absence
some found
wisdom

 

Precious Resources

After many years of drought
much water was found in my ocular region
like a precious resource greedy fingers rush to exploit

a few wildcat drills and there it was
water with some mineral content
plentiful

like diamonds buried in the sands
of Central African Republic children find on the way to school
rough
unshaped
dirty

diamonds when eating lentil soup
diamonds when pulling out clumps of hair in the shower
diamonds when jamming clothes in the dryer in a public laundromat

diamonds in the morning
at night
when you touch my face
when orgasm

 

To My Lady of the Chemo Port — Red Devil Chemo

Wring my body
like a tissue
drunk with tears of galactic warriors

Cut out forgiveness on my forearm
with a stolen razor blade

Name what’s nameless
in the cacophony of sorrows

Bury my honey in earth’s chest
for later
I will return
to dredge it out
with my greedy for life fists

Take my toes
take my right leg
take my breasts
take my eyelashes my eyebrows my hair
my stubbornness and rigidity

Strip me
of the unnecessary

 

Godly Ways

Stopped by 1 Wall Street
the rain is a mist at this point
twirling up and down
thrown off gravity by the wind

I get down and touch the drenched sidewalk
with my fingertips
it has a texture — that of a shark I once touched
rough with minuscule grooves

I see you in a sequence of shots
opening your door for me
countless times
standing there
ready to embrace me
an eternity in that tiny hallway

I realize I’m facing Trinity Church
that reddish stained-glass window
as if a volcano erupted inside
or another bloody war started over Jesus

I see bloodshed
a beautiful bloodshed

or maybe god wore red lipstick
on a hot summer day
and in a godly way decided to
smear it all over the window
to keep the sun out

 

You Are My Sentient Earth
Notes to Spirit

Sleepless night on higher land
Body burning with reactive platinum
DNA strands unwinding like snakes after a fight

A feverish pause on odd beginnings of chemotherapy
Mustard gas – a poison and a cure
straight from muddy century-old trenches

Unquenchable thirst of an overheated engine
Driving down a shattering volcano
Sucking on ice cubes
Holding food down
As if in a silo

Still burning with Carbo
I found myself lodged between
Convergent structures of mud and straw
Somewhere in the city
The old meatpacking district

The smell of earth
overpowering
weirdly soothing
Familiar
Not suffocating
like being buried 6 feet under

This earth wanted me to enter within
Sink into it
bite into it
Like you
It wanted to embrace my body
with its mass and volume
Like you
It was calling me
Like you

I felt my fingers slowly enveloped by the soft warm soil
A profound sense of peace
seeped under my skin
putting out all the little fires inside me
blurred thoughts
memories
of a toxic kiss I gave you
A carbo kiss of poison they put inside me
You took it gladly
You took it gladly