Ellen Bass is our keynote speaker for the 2020 Virtual Sierra PoetryFestival. She will also be leading a workshop at the virtual event April 18th. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University. If you sign up for her newsletter, she will email you a poem!
Listen here to the poem read by Tracy K. Smith, who served as the 22nd United States Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019, and is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light and several books of poetry, including her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Life on Mars. She is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University, and hosts the podcast TheSlowdown.
Mammogram Call Back with Ultra Sound by Ellen Bass
So this is what I’m here for, to see inside
the mute weight of my right breast, heavy handful
of treasure I longed for as a girl when I cried
behind the curtain in the Guerlaine sisters’ corset shop.
Those tender spinsters could hardly bear
my tears, as they adjusted the straps
on a padded lace bra. I had to wait another year
before my breasts swelled like wind-filled sails
and many were the explorers carried away,
searching for perfumes and spices,
the nerve-laden nipples singing through the wires.
But never has there been a joy like this
as I lay in the pale green cool of radiology.
The lineage of death has swerved around me.
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
As the wand of the ultrasound glides over my flesh,
revealed is a river of light, a bright
undulant tangle of lobules and milk ducts,
ligaments and tissue, harmless and radiant
against the black fat. I could be looking up
at the night sky, this wispy band of brilliance,
a shining spur of the milky way galaxy,
and I, in my infinitesimal life, will,
at least for tonight, keep these lovely atoms
before I must return them to the stars.
Writing prompt using elements of this poem: Freewrite for 20 minutes. Begin with the now “So this” of an event that may involve a part of your body, move back in time to describe two memories, make a turn at line 12 “But”, praise with wonder and joy.
1 comment:
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