Biopsy in Pink

poetry

I arrive on a metal table, my underlife
flooding the screen. I am famous—the entire

picture, edge to edge, unseemly bloom,
a van Dongen with too much rouge.

Take a piece from the blackened whole
and spread me under a microscope.

I’ll be the one wearing flowers, a hand-sized
hibiscus rippling behind my ear like

a warning with sequins and foghorn:
abnormal cell cluster at 9 and 4.

A clock in my breast and the seconds
twitch, inching forward like scalpels.

My scintillating cilia full of frill, thrill
of the grotesque, its misshapen promise.

The doctor says, Pick a shape for your scar:
a frown or grin, incised across my heart.

Now smile for the giant eye of God.

This poem is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Hadara Bar-Nadav’s newest book of poetry is The New Nudity. She is also the author of Lullaby (with Exit Sign), which was awarded the Saturnalia Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin, runner-up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight, awarded the Margie Book Prize. Hadara is currently a professor of English at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.