November 2023
Bio Note: I am currently recovering from my fourth abdominal surgery in just over three years. What makes the recovery process so much more bearable is my amazing wife and our retired racing dog. Writing poetry and keeping a sense of humor have also kept me sane as I've gone through my cancer journey, some of which is chronicled in my most recent collection, The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets.
Chemo Brain
Words, those slippery little fish, wiggle free
and dart away, lost in a sea—no, an ocean—of words.
*
Thoughts are lost to each other like pedestrians
in the Great Smog of London.
*
Dates, times, conversation—all move through the
dark sky of my mind like asteroids, only to be
sucked up by a black hole.
*
Strings of ideas unravel like threads
in an unfinished sweater.
*
Unlike planaria, sentences cut off
midway may never regenerate.
*
Anger and frustration bubble up from time to time
like methane gas burped skyward by robust
bacteria, munching away at the petroleum.
*
Chemo brain is trying to teach me something.
I can’t quite remember what.
Brindle Greyhound
Her paws, wide as small spades,
rearrange the earth when she runs.
Her ears slip like silk ascots between
my fingers. When she shakes herself off,
her tail stings like a whip against my leg,
and when she’s excited, her teeth chatter
like a telegraph machine. Her fur smells,
always, like cardamom cake and freshly
laundered sheets dried in the sun.
When she lies down beside the couch
where I’m napping, sighs of contentment
resonate from the bellows of her generous
lungs with a sonorous Barry White rumble,
low, slow, and, yes, full of soul.
©2023 Yvonne Zipter
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse-Virtual. It is very important. -JL