CHEMOTHERAPY

Up from the massage table I catch sight of myself in the unavoidable mirror. [...]

by Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Up from the massage table
I catch sight of myself
in the unavoidable mirror.

Afternoon light doesn’t blink.
Basic bald head. Bare pudendum.
Soft pile of belly and hips.

Once mirrors drew me like friends,
broke my gloomy moods
with a smile, eyes brighter

than I’d remembered. Now I’m sacra
to myself, a neutral suggestion,
transpersonal form. Stripped

to Neolithic goddess, I’m all
that’s behind all that will ever be,
prima mater, prima material,

impersonal as rain, kneaded
to dozens of shapes, except
that my chest is scarred

which is what you’d expect
of a goddess in this 21st century.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Kathryn Kirkpatrick, poet and literary scholar, is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Our Held Animal Breath (2012), which was selected by poet Chard DeNiord for the NC Poetry Society’s Brockman-Campbell Award.

She is also the editor of two collections of essays on Irish writers, Border Crossings: Irish Women Writers and National Identities (University of Alabama Press, 2000) and, with Borbála Faragó, Animals in Irish Literature and Culture (Palgrave, 2015).

Find out more here.

CHEMOTHERAPY

by Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Kathryn Kirkpatrick

Monika Kozak