The Word Cancer Spoken Yesterday John McKernan He said it softly Slowly The little C’s A matched pair of right & left hand knives Tiny enough to slice in layers my retinas To unmoor the little pump of my heart Growing like a red flower on its blue stalk & all the tatters of an alphabet in that word Their rising levels of mute hatefulness The fashionable ski-slope A (Don’t you just Want to scream & turn it upside down?) How do you sound now Mister A? & that N I’ve spent entire days thinking How a misspelling might change a meaning But mostly that lower case e Its masquerade For that final fork E That vast Einsteinian E

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