Round two was on my left. Six weeks. Crawled
onto a table. Repeated to myself what technicians told me
about how it would bear down.
My mother waited.
Another patient who waited
was an elderly Iranian, black scarf wrapped
around her head. Her son with her.
Hers had gone to black. Charcoal. Big breasts
take it hard, worse than mine did.
Cursed or unlucky. Or Persian. Fire bombs, napalm,
white phosphorus, unexploded mines, spent bombs with traces.
I beg you, reader, not to confuse the two of us
with the bomb cases they have to deal with. Antibiotic ointment
is beautiful, in comparison.
It’s lacy camisoles.
More radiation than a whole body in the Hiroshima affair.
My mother stood up when I finished picking at lunch.
Chose pastry, coffee from the coffee bar. Don’t compare me
to them. Dessert
after radiation.
Leonie Mikele Fogle is a Seattle native. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts (2015) where she studied poetry with David Wagoner and Carolyne Wright. She earned a BA in acting from New York University and before that was a scholarship student at the Joffrey Ballet School. Her poetry has appeared in several print and online journals. Her collection “Tempo Rubato/Stolen Time” was selected as a 2016 semi-finalist for Fordham University’s POL prize.
