RADIATION 1
The Zapper’s head swings back and forth
steel eyes shooting beams into my flesh
I clutch a cold handle with my fist
and pretend I’m riding
the Coney Island carousel
but the music is bad
and the painted horses
all have broken legs.
THE SERPENT
What was I doing
when the serpent invaded my breast
probably nothing
more than eating a quince
buying a quart of mik
driving on a rain-slick road.
It was so small I didn’t feel its fangs.
For a long time it nestled inside a duct
between succulent lobules
admired its spirals, a pity not to clone itself–
a twin, a quadruplet, soon a swarm of cells
jostling inside the duct, pressing against its walls
and bursting through them
into new territory
wily as the asp
hidden in a basket of figs
Cleopatra consumed
until it wormed itself into her heart.
RADIATION 2
I’m the Statue of Liberty
knocked flat, right hand
grasping a cold strap
where once my torch
lit the way for all who would enter,
my crown split, more gaps than teeth, body
twisted into position
for the rays that will cross,
frolic, burn through my flesh
laid out on a rusting metal slab
while Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
plays over and over from the hollow harbor below.
TWIN
Cancer Girl, it’s your turn now,
brash, fecund, reckless,
all these years lurking inside me
until an errant gene set you loose,
my twin that never got older
than the day we came into being
in the same dark tunnel
enroute to the cave
waiting to welcome us.
But when we crossed its border
you split from me, burrowed
inside a wall, a speck of you
trailing a thread that entered
a thin pocket of my flesh
on which you feasted while rehearsing
for your grand exit
through a gap in the zipper,
wicked princess, strip-teasing
belle of the midnight ball,
common whore.