Issue 4.1
Winter 2024
Donna Isaac
Reflection
Though I hesitated in writing poetry focused on a cancer diagnosis, the specter of it, the time it consumes, the immersion in it, its indefatigable presence overwhelms. This poem represent a lack of control with mixed and inevitable choices. It focuses on language—oxymoronic and symbolic—juxtaposing words to evoke a feeling of unfeeling, numbness in the face of overwhelming forces. Cancer chooses for you the course of action or inaction, your body "formulated, sprawling on a pin/...pinned and wriggling on the wall" (T.S. Eliot).
Declaration
Every night now I think of 1 darkness like stygian gloom 2 the white horse of death 3 snowy cottonwood
because of what
1 threads through filigreed shadows 2 carpets the ceiling with dread 3 uplifts me into clouds.
It was an elusive webbing
that crept in, showed up 1 like golden bells of consecration 2 in a late-night reverie 3 monsters in cupboards.
The days jolted by. Water wagons
of phlegmatic, sanguine rivers
1 dammed by sadness 2 fed by tears 3 unstopped, unchecked.
Summer was no more.
I am not a girl in the mirror
but 1 a bone of pain 2 a sliver of shell 3 a farrago of fearful hope
something upon a marble slab of experiment
1 poked with poisonous darts 2 pieced like a quilted star 3 shaking like a besieged city,
a montage to make whole again.
The 1 moon eclipses 2 red sky screams 3 mourning dove pleats air.
I await a dawn of 1 toxicity 2 ethereal light 3 beams
distracted by a massage of possibility.
There is no choice but
1 a green desire 2 gelid fear 3 petals of purple iris
until decision drops
and shields the intensity
of 1 gamma rays 2 cross-stitched wounds 3 a hurled firebolt.
Drought has begun.
I await 1 squash blossoms of gold 2 a blessing of dragonflies 3 a sea breeze.
though eldritch conspirators, heads together,
undo much of the 1 done 2 good 3 known.
The unknown, a jolt like speed.
​
Poet Donna Isaac is a teaching artist/organizer of community literary events through the League of MN Poets. She has a B.A. (James Madison University); an M.A. (University of Minnesota); and an M.F.A. (Hamline University.) A new book of poems by Finishing Press, In the Tilling, is forthcoming. donnaisaacpoet.com
Donna's Book Recommendations
During this time of ongoing treatments, I am re-reading or reading for the first time the collected works of William Shakespeare. There is no greater poet, the language, so rich. I also read Blended Voices: Blending the Voices of Virginia Poets, a collection by the Poetry Society of VA in which poets wrote their own works, meshing in the exact words from four famous poets, producing surprising harmonies of old and new lines.