Nouns

M. Jennings

My sister sends me

our grandmother's scarf when

I get cancer, for courage, she says

I am the strongest person

she knows yet I remember her

taming snakes, beating

back the blackberry bushes, flushing

rats from toilets, disappointing

herself and living anyway.

Our grandmother's scarf is

pink, lavender, and purple, a swirly

sixties design, signed by Vera, likely

something bought at Woolworth's.

My sister doesn't know I collect Vera

scarves, so this heirloom arrives

uncannily. I do need courage.

I loop the scarf around my neck before the radiation

donut and worry the corners during the PICC install

as the plastic tubing wends through

my arm, shoulder, aorta. Later

the anti-nausea drip ticks and

drips, ticks and

drips.

Injection port, roller clamp, trans-pal, Alaris

PC Model 8015, Made in San Diego, smartly

like so many machines I've written about—

to Reset, press Off twice. I'm pressing.

The chemo has a name, but I forget

it because I can't think

properly anymore. This noun

is called chemo

brain but feels like a verb

I can't get to, can't name. I know

it's there but I can't

find

it anymore,

forgotten

where it lives.

There

are two chemos. This

is the first, dripping.

The second comes home

in a fanny-pack, a 24-hour pet

with battery to drip

in my arm. It sings

a clicking song in the night like

the crickets that drove my grandmother

crazy summer nights in her housedress

tugging the washing

machine from the wall to discharge

them. Writing poetry

in the cancer

ward is bleak. The women, why are

we all women, doze. Men—husbands,

sons, fathers (no boyfriends here)—read

their phones in adjacent chairs while

machines chirp.

Awake, I take in my husband

as if I've been away years.

He's aged, fragile. I don't want him

to suffer. I reach up and

the scarf is still there

and I am still here