These three poems are designed to appear landscape on one piece of paper, with the first poem on the left, the third on the right and the second poem nestled in the middle.
for AS
We wished the cancer on him.
Prayed the carcinoma
would enlarge and spread
like fungus
through his lungs and heart,
swell his bowel with tumours.
We hoped he would not die
but live instead
in clawing spasm,
jaw contorted to a groan
that could not ease the agony.
Sadly, anger could not trigger
a metastasis
and the NHS tend bruises
of beaten women
as they treat cancers in men
the size of fists.
Despite everything, he lived.
Cancer (2)
for LS
The cancer was sudden
and thumped her with pain.
Under the pummelling
the tumours blossomed
like chrysanthemums. She died.
Cancer (3)
for JH
Some things had gone wrong.
A depression into which
she disappeared for a year
was like a domino
knocking into another
from the suicide of her brother.
When she got better, her mother
got cancer and died
and the father who abused her
got cancer and lived.
And then she got cancer.
It was as if the anger
had concentrated to a knot
in her breast
When the doctors removed it,
everything was undid.
Despite everything, she lived.
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