July 2024
Laurie Byro
philbop@warwick.net
Bio Note: "Radiotherapy" is because Shawn, after I described how it felt to walk the corridor to gets rads for breast cancer, said "there is a poem there" and "Bertrand's Island" is old, from when they took down the amusement park to replace it with fancy condos. I have missed everyone on VV and hope the community is doing well.

Radiotherapy

There are tigers waiting for me at the end of the hall,
ready to pounce—one lies down on my chest. 
I feel the heat of its breath, its teeth, a hacksaw eager
to devour my breast.  The nurse lights candles: vanilla, lavender
tells me to relax, but the tigers smell the searing of flesh.
The room fills with their glittering eyes,

I study their amber eyes as their pupils dilate. Each day
I see a different face in each.  Captive for twenty days, held still
in the tiger’s embrace, comes the rush of heat, the purring that
is part of the cure. Each time before, I walk that hall to this room.

I pass tropical wallpaper and cheap Gauguin posters shriek.
I nod at the parrot, the macaws, the brown sleepy women in repose.
My hand is held by an ancestor who once walked these halls.
In the tiger’s black pools wait my Brother, my Uncle, my Father—
warriors who survived this ritual. In the candle flame,
these tigers leap and rise. This dark cave has ancient knowing eyes.

Bertrand's Island

When they dismantled
all the wood
that made up 
the depth of people's anxiety
the roller coaster
that seemed to groan
with the weight of all that fear
"Not safe, gonna crash one day,
kill people"
it was like trying to pull
the teeth from an alligator.
I feel its sadness;
that old monster
built before fax machines
and the world wide web
making us breathless
as lovers when we kiss
white knuckled passion
as our fears disappear
into the darkness 
where stars send signals
that something is happening below
why else all that screaming?
Why else all that laughter and joy?

If I think carefully back
to my 13th summer
I can remember the order
of the rides
the popcorn my friends and I share
the cotton candy
sweet and light as we are
at that age
and the boys we cry over
and the ones we let down our shirts.

I wonder which of us are
married or divorced
dead now or alive
as that moment
when the night blows our screams
like kisses up to the moon
before life became so complicated
and we all knew then for certain
why we were screaming.

©2024 Laurie Byro
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