Graceina Samosir
Cancer’s fingers
When my father first learns
of the hungry cells within
his lungs, we say “The cancer
came back,” like it went
on vacation, like it caught
a plane we could never afford
to take and returned sun-
warmed and refreshed, with
lavish souvenirs. My sister hand-
stitches one of my father’s ball-caps
with junk-drawer magenta
thread: FUCK CANCER, it says,
the swear like an honorific for
the being always in the room
now, so embodied and full of
personality I sometimes
offer it a chair. A gallows sense
of humor—mine, I mean, not
Cancer’s. I’m coping. The three
of us, meaning Cancer, my father,
and me, sit daily in doctor-prescribed
meditation, and daily my left
foot, followed by my right, falls
asleep. With my eyes closed,
I’m sure, within the prickling,
that Cancer’s fingers are brushing
us lightly, watching the bloom
of static spread over. And daily,
I walk, I shower and sing, make use
of my body, knowing what image can’t
be washed from me. Though I love
what language can do, making human
what we refuse to consider so, I am
now choosing different work for
personhood. I know that if you look
long enough at anything—closely,
microscopically—it will appear near
beautiful, geometric, worthy of
a poem—a poem, too, so often
at risk of coming alive, of taking up
a creature-skin, turning soul-
full. Already—already—there
is too much for us to tend.
Birthday
My body turns over the wet rock of year.
In full sun, its underneath will still not warm.
Not yet warm, I toast the next marshmallow.
It puckers in some places; burns in others.
What burns well in others does not burn in me.
I have had this body since my twelfth birthday.
On my birthday, we eat s’mores to celebrate.
I would rather celebrate something else.
Something else: three small bones inside each ear.
These remain the same size from birth to death.
From birth to death, I’ll grow into my knuckles.
There’s a green morning I might yet arrive to,
One green morning when I scrape the false bottom
Of becoming and fall through and through and through.
—————
Julia McDaniel is a poet, teacher, and community organizer from Columbus, Ohio. Her work is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Pinch, Witness, and elsewhere.