Biopsy

I say it’s a knife fight that landed the bandage
on my right cheek. The biopsy story
elicits sympathy I don’t want or need.
The knife story renders me edgy.
I say it’s a sword that pierced clear through
my right breast. The biopsy story
worries even those whose worried minds
never count me among their concerns.
Neither of these probes frighten or surprise me.
If positive, I’ll excise the tumors.
After all, I’ve been severing parts of myself
for decades just to get by in this world.
 

Amy Strauss Friedman is the author of the poetry collection The Eggshell Skull Rule (forthcoming in 2018 from Kelsay Books) and the chapbook Gathered Bones are Known to Wander (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). Amy’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Pleiades, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere.

 … return to Issue 10.2 Table of Contents.