17 Days After Mastectomy & Axillary Dissection of Lymph Nodes: A Love Poem

17 Days After Mastectomy & Axillary Dissection of Lymph Nodes: A Love Poem

17 Days After Mastectomy & Axillary Dissection of Lymph Nodes: A Love Poem

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We think we let the world in—
how oxidation slowly turns the avocado
dimple by lovely dimple
from green to brown to black; O oxygen
how you react to polyphenols, how
enzymes love us too much, too wanting
wringing with desire, slick & wet & biochemical
so we must breathe in the soot & we must
exhale our own toxins; the way of any living
thing is to live
, they say; what if all the theys
are wrong? what if the living never came
easy in the first place? what if I keep
removing pieces of you: shuck of appendix,
shuck of gallbladder, shuck of knee, now,
shuck of breast, shuck of nodes? cenotes
of us: carved from our tissues, our fluid-filled ____;
where we must & always swim—but we were wrong.
We world, wholly; planet of flesh, ripening.
Let wind, let sun consume; fruit of us
to elements; let’s engulf & gulp in remembering
w/holes: the whole world claws & thunders inside
these vessels, this lymphatic system to make us
immune—as if, as if—immune to what? Parts of us
let go into stars beyond this planet: call these petri-
dish bound
, call these cancer evictions; what I know
of never returning: a star before super nova senses
the future rupture: premonition echoes: transform.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

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Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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