Breast Cancer Poems from Chiffon Saris

Breast Cancer Poems from the book:

Chiffon Saris

The Life and Death of a Death Mask

In our Creative Writing Workshop, the creative writer
makes us create death masks.
In her Lila Wallace funded workshop, she strapped
our faces down with plaster bandages. "What is the purpose?"
I asked repeatedly. "To laugh in the face of death?"
My mother would have been superstitious. "Doohar, doohar,"
she would have said using the Gujarati word for unlucky.
Several Hispanic women participants didn't come
that day. Old man Mr. Guzman didn't want
any part of it. He sat and watched
As the photographer photographed the application
and removal by Vaseline, of plaster of Paris
leaving our faces looking younger, almost as
though a mortician had gone to work, on us,
mostly white folks and academics, unsuperstitious.

I mounted mine like a retablo, making an
altar to myself. I should be venerated, shouldn't I?
Surrounded by a tin halo, embellished with a
marital tili, my eyebrows affirmations,
I am that I am. Om bhur buh svaha.

Under the hollows of the eyes, I painted eyes.
On the mask, I painted lashes and eyebrows, and created
eyes that winked like mine and winked at me
as I moved around the room. The left eye
mischievously peered at me through the right eye hole,
and in the dark half light the eye holes in
the mask, looked like the dark rings
typical of Parsi eyes, genetic propensities.

Yes, my death mask had come alive,
keeping me alive as I chose life
and now choose it fully.

I am that I am. I AM.

Thank you God.

I look at my face - in the death mask
hanging on my wall like a retablo,
framed in tin surrounded by sparkly pipe cleaners
and affirmations: I see with the loving eyes of
God, etc. But it looks at me - just as
though I were looking at me and smiles,
like I smile. I love it. But it is not
to love, but to face. So when I need
to talk to myself, I bring it down
from the wall and plop it on my lap.
"Let's have a heart to heart," I say.
"Let's make this decision, let's see.
I'm seriously considering taking a
stressed out leave; I'm close to a nervous
breakdown now. Hello face
I can't face myself!" But when it
winks back, it smiles at me
And I know I can do it.

III

Today I have been diagnosed
with breast cancer.
I come home
and rip the death mask
off the board
on which it was mounted.
I put it in my Agnihotra pot,
I pour on barbeque lighter fluid,
I torch it.
I will live.
I am too young
for a death mask.

I gather the ashes
in a paper bag,
and dump the ashes
with a blessing
of compassion:

"May you be at peace
May your heart remain open
May you find the beauty
and radiance
Of your own true nature."

I look at my reflection
in the glass doors of my
fireplace
and see
that I have become
my death mask
the hair on my head
fallen
from chemotherapy
My eyes hollowed out
just like I had
hollowed the eyes
on my death mask
Parsi dark shadows circle my eyes, still.

My mouth is a thin dry line
feathered with dryness
Oh death, you will not have me
I will flesh out again
And curse whoever sent you
to me
in the form of a death mask
And never again will I
play with traditions
for creativity.

Tonsure by Force

Pick, pick, pick
I pick my hairs
as they fall out
one by one.

C-h-e-m-o-therapy

therapy for
sins long forgotten
hormones long taken
to protect from pregnancies
un-begotten and
night sweats
that dampen-
synthetic hormones
horse's urine turned
into magenta pills
breeding cancer cells
fertilized by soy estrogens
taken for
Parsi lacose intolerance.

I collect my hairs
in plastic bags
to toss out together.
Native Americans believe
that hair scattered
is soul scattered
I don't want to
scatter my soul to the winds.

I thought of offering
the tonsure to
androgynous
Shri Balaji
God/Goddes of the hairs
Shri Venkateshwara
of the seven hills of Tirupathi.
But would Adriamycin apoceaia
be appropriate?