Writing poetry to process breast cancer

I wrote as a teenager, in college and graduate school, and through my first career as a high school English teacher in North Philadelphia. Then I moved to Boston, became a public interest lawyer, got married, became a parent – and during a six-month period in 2012-2013, my marriage ended, and I was diagnosed with stage IIB, grade 3, triple-positive breast cancer. I worked full-time and parented my then-four-year-old through most of treatment, and even though I was at Dana Farber, I didn’t have the opportunity to attend support groups or take advantage of the resources around me. Any writing I did was for work.

A few years later, in 2015, I found Writing the Journey, a Living Beyond Breast Cancer program offered online for the first time that year. We read pieces by Anya Krogovoy Silver, Alicia Ostriker, Sharon Bray, and facilitator Alysa Cummings, among others. And we wrote. Each week, poems poured out of me, describing the shock and pain and loss of diagnosis and treatment. I started sharing with people in my life, and my poetry touched them. I participated in an online writing group with the Cactus Cancer Society a few years later, writing alongside other cancer patients, survivors, and thrivers, and sharing our stories. With the encouragement of an in-person workshop instructor at Grub Street in Boston, I began submitting my poems for publication, and in 2019, I was fortunate to be selected for a juried poetry workshop with writer Marge Piercy. People wanted to read my words.

A divorced Jewish lesbian mother now 10 years out from my breast cancer diagnosis, I write poems about family, sexuality, illness, and survival. I am still processing everything that happened to me, and to people for whom I care deeply. Poetry allows me to express my anger, my grief, my gratitude in a way that I could not when I was in the midst of treatment, when I was too scared to put these feelings into words – scared it would make cancer more real and thus more powerful, scared I would drive people away by talking about it. Now, poetry allows others to connect with my words, my stories, and my emotions. Writing heals me, and in the process, I hope it provides others with comfort and a sense that they are not alone.

Sliced Open I

Spooned it off and away,
nipple and all this time,
last time the odds said
the articles said
the surgeon said
Lumpectomy
the breast so big anyway
we could go in again
and no one would know.

Until
day of surgery mammogram
when they found more
decided to try anyway
with one site, maybe two
cut away those cells, layer upon layer
learn how many more
lay in wait.

The call the next week:
two nodes, the spread contained
but the margins unclean
those cells that escaped
meant losing the breast
I’d held her to
for more than two years.

Such a hard start
we fought, my daughter and I
I believed mothering
meant feeding by breast,
only by breast
and mine certainly should work
given their ample size
passing an early test of motherhood,
I thought love
protected the breast.

Sliced Open II

I thought love
protected the breast
when you held me
close, through city
night streets.

But I became a statistic
one more who would divorce
following a seven year itch
you needed to scratch
within a decade
of gaining the right to marry.

Maybe it was brought on
by end of love
cells bursting
through anger, betrayal, shock
after fourteen years, an affair
end of love
why had I picked you
to cut me, sliced open
you didn’t mince words
when you left.

How to love a survivor

touch me, here

but not only here

and don’t be hurt

if I pull away

let me feel the pressure

of your fingers, of your

tongue

on my newly healed skin

touch my scars

but not only my scars

allow me the moment

to take in a breath

relieved that I can feel you

-- in some places at least --

that my body is whole

-- or wholly mine anyway --

and as we make love please

let me experience

the depth of my loss

and the breadth of my found

threads

i thought it
skipped
a generation
this dis ease
i share with my
holocaust-surviving
broken english-speaking
grandmother who taught me
to sew buttons on
napkins – safta,
white-haired,
told stories of escape
and fear and
loss

at sixteen
i said goodbye
from the speckled
linoleum outside
her bedroom door
so she could
spare me
the sight of her
dying

two decades later
for me it stopped
at the breast

but
after four quiet years
it got him
too – safta’s strong son –
first the kidney
confined
but now possibly
leaking
spreading
weaving fabric through three
generations

suddenly aged, i watch her
though weary eyes
still young and soft
i hope
my daughter’s enough
to break the
thread

Golden

burnished gold

the name of the color

candlesticks smooth

those strands long and perfect

cold to the touch when unlit

unworn

unwarmed

on a plastic molded head

headcover over her

wig

like yours, the lady sighs

grandma stands tall, lights fire

and I imagine

for a moment

I am strong again

she is strong again

I know it’s coming

welcoming sabbath

losing the hair

pushing

cancer

from my body

to the side

A note on form: Golden is a contrapuntal, which means it may be read both across and down.

Amy’s list

If you're interested in processing through poetry, Amy shares some recommended reading and writing resources:

• In addition to the poets mentioned above, I enjoy reading the work of Nikki Giovanni, Adrienne Rich, Andrea Gibson,  Ada Limon, Yrsa Daly Ward, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, and Sharon Olds, among others.
• Sharon Bray offers writing prompts, often related to healing.
• Poets & Writers magazine offers interesting poetry prompts as well.

Learn more about the Academy of American Poets’ annual National Poetry Month celebration, including activities and free events throughout the month of April.