Breath & Shadow
2004 - Vol. 1, Issue 9
"Plain English"
written by
Elizabeth Marchitti
My friend Natalia says
I shouldn't use words like
hemorrhoids and fissure, words
that perfectly describe those
painful things.
I should be more poetic,
she says.
Perhaps she wouldn't want me
to say radical cystectomy,
use words like ostomy surgery,
ostomy appliance,
perhaps she wouldn't want me
to paint her a picture
of what those most unpoetic
things look like,
never mind feel like.
Well, having your bladder removed
is not very poetic,
but I am a poet.
I must put certain words
into a poem.
My cancer is gone.
I am wearing this little plastic bag
which dangles on my thigh,
I can feel the urine coming out.
It feels warm, I don't know why,
since it should be body temperature.
I find it mildly annoying,
not very poetic,
but it is, after all, necessary,
and so are these words
in plain English.
Elizabeth Marchitti has had work published in The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Passage, Sensations Magazine, and Without Halos. In June of 2002 she had surgery for bladder cancer. In December of 2002 she gave a sermon in poetry at Christ Church in Totowa, New Jersey.