Cancer Poems

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SCARS

I got a scar on my breast-

I got a scar under my armpit-

I got one hell of a wormlike scar right under my clavicle.

(Clavicle, from the Latin for small key)

Poetic, isn’t it?

Take away the tumor from my breast,

Remove a few lymph nodes for good measure,

insert port in chest so I can be pumped through with chemicals.

All good for a girl of 65, isn’t it?

Did you know cyclophosphamide contains mustard gas?

I was blitzed with gas like the poor Doughboys of WWI.

Taxotere made my hair fall out. I was bald for six months.

When I looked in the mirror I saw a big nose like Jimmy Durante 

and W.C. Fields.

(Don’t know those guys? Google ‘em.)

I have hair now and lopsided Picasso breasts but supposedly I am alive.

I haven’t croaked yet.

IMPERFECTION

When you are missing part of your chest, you must make concessions.

Accommodations.

Symmetry is beauty, they tell us.

Lopsided good for bunny ears, not for breasts.

Picasso bosom, the new norm?

One high, one low, studded with scars. Funky!

Now take the Venus de Milo-

She is missing her arms, but at least she has her breasts.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace- she is missing her head, but at least she has her breasts.

They have endured for a couple thousand years unfinished.

I can endure for a few more decades. 

Incomplete, but not inadequate.

Imperfect but not insecure.

Asymmetrical but assured.

Museum quality imperfection.

NOT TO BELABOR A POINT

Not to belabor a point/

I spend a lot of time discussing my bosom/

But Italians are vain and I am Italian.

I think; therefore; I obsess/

Body parts swell and recede/

But rarely come and go.

Part of mine went/

I now wear Amazon zippy bras/

Heavily padded/

I am armored.

I can play Brunhilde in Die Walkure/

Kill the Wabbit, sang Elmer Fudd/

No Sports Illustrated swimsuit shots of me/

But one night when I am overserved I will try to hang my graduation

tassels on my mismatched boobs and see if they twirl.