Mantis
So there I was, marooned on a remote island, the Academy of Lifelong Learning. I had what the doctors called an “oddball cancer,” one of the 14,000 cases of liposarcoma annually in the U.S. Down in the basement, behind a steel door, is a special X-ray machine, a linear accelerator, that resembles a giant praying mantis poised to devour her sex partner. The radiation burned up the cancer cells, but also healthy tissue. I am mostly empty space on the long car ride home.
*
Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.
You captured the hugeness of this so succinctly and perfectly.
Thank yu!
Wow. Amazing poem.