POETRY
MARGARET PRICE
Gratitude and Cancer
In the baffling twilight on the river road,
apparitions: white dog watching,
cyclist
without lights. They chide me: Don't forget your
thighs are meat, organs jelly,
brain
a sponge. Caution wards off nothing, yet
is all I have to tender; so
I do.
In a year of gratitude and cancer,
I've been chewing ice, gorging toward the pure
alarm
called brain freeze. I want pain clean as ethanol,
urgent, fascinating. I want to
clutch
my temples, know the fault belongs to me,
not to those whose half–care must be half–
forgiven.
In this gutshot year, this rod, this cleft,
this year of nothing left, I'm told to wait.
Wait,
and watch the faces reconfigure, watch
the people smile and stroll into their
abattoirs,
watch geometry unspool, earth tip, stars dry,
watch hope die repeatedly. This is known as
healing.
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