America, We Hope This is A Mammogram by Alison Hurwitz

America, We Hope This is A Mammogram

America, it’s clear you’ve gone without deodorant,
driven into inquisition, arrived on time and tried
to find distraction in the waiting room.

America, we know you are half hoping they will never
call your name, hope that they forget to lead you
to a cell and strip. They don’t. You fold your bra,

try to tuck it underneath your shirt and sweater,
as if anyone would check, or for that matter, care.
America, you’ll tell yourself that this is routine screening,

discomfort best endured with equanimity. In the
examination room, a politician helps insert your tender parts
into the rack, the press, the radiation squeeze, then drape

your uterus away from inconvenient expression. They say
some soreness now prevents ineptitude or populist disquiet from
becoming angry subdivision. We hope this is your method here:

that after you are 3D screened and hold your breath, you will exhale,
emerging bruised and blotched with red, contused but cancer free.
We hope it isn’t already too late, hope you’ve not metastasized beyond

the reach of intervention. We’ll wait for your results. Fingers crossed.

*

Alison Hurwitz is a former cellist and dancer who now finds music in language. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2024, and for Best of the Net in 2023 and 2024, Alison is the host of the monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Published in South Dakota Review, SWIMM, Sky Island Journal and others, her work is forthcoming in The Westchester Review and Poetry in Plain Sight. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings and memorial services, walks in the woods, and dances in her kitchen with her family. Find her at alisonhurwitz.com