Coffeeshop Writers Group - Kidney poems: Post-op and The Opening

New girl in town: Carol Robinson, (R), who found us on the Internet. Next to her is Beatriz Moisset, originally from Argentina, who read her essay on the importance of bats.

Beatriz also brought in a humorous poem by geneticist and evolutionary biologist J B S Haldane that begins:

"Cancer’s a Funny Thing:
I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
This kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked..."

Sorry, Linda, my hand was shaking. Linda read her beautiful Easter poem "He is Risen."

Donna Krause, who's been published in IdeaGems, read a poem about the upcoming birth of her grandchild in October.

Nadia read two wonderful poems: Colorado Reprieve and Paradise Lost. She and I are in Bill Kulik's poetry class at Cheltenham Adult Evening School. Note our first poetry magazine called Icing on the Cake.

Kym Cohen, not shown, read 6 short poems published within the journal. She posts them on FB and I think I'm gonna follow suit. Why don't YOU try it Bill Hess and Coach Iris? All the words that can fit in the small space they give you.

Easter treats at Weinrich's Bakery. It was mobbed today and they added xtra cash registers.

Ruth Deming w/ her flaming red hair thanks to using the wrong bottle. As I was leaving the coffeeshop a man read my T-shirt and asked me, Why dyou have three kidneys?

I told him the story.

Here's two poems I wrote in about 20 minutes this morning meeting my "writer's deadline," the purpose of starting the writing group. Gotta know how to trick yourself.

Everyone elsedoes the same thing.


POST-OP


after the operation

i wasn’t sure it was

still me

they inserted a new kidney

and left raised thumbprints

at the site

i play with them while i

fall asleep



it’s the way the flowers look

the virginia bluebells i forgot i

planted

i now hear them ring

or that easter rain that hits the

roof while i sleep

i go out to meet it

come morning

and the birds have

reclaimed their glad songs.





THE OPENING

what awaited them later that day?

sex with a new lover?

a glass of wine on the patio?

i was not there when they cut me open

just my body with two trying-hard kidneys

that slowed down ever since that night of

my “302” and the taking of lithium carbonate

to stop the demons in my brain



what was i dreaming the moment they

installed sarah’s kidney in my belly -

of my lost husband who was buried

in oklahoma?

or my father who celebrated seders

and beat me with the belt that held up

his pants?

i hear the birds now

i survived



the roomful of surgeons

doing no harm

arrived by appointment only

in the huge operating room

before my eyes closed i gave

a shiver from the cold

they moved like russian dancers

across my body

crochet motions of Zaki’s hands

while staring at the tube

there were no surprises

he’d met sarah’s kidney in three-D

and laid it like a

burial wreath on easter morn

inside the hot everglades of

my body which so loved

the world:

the maple in the backyard with clusters

in patterns as it grew so much slower

than baby grace

and slept noiselessly all winter

with the patience of an oak



dennis, who got the kidney of a 40-year-old

dead of cystic fibrosis, told me they listen to

classical while the sun shines weakly on the

brickface and magnolias of the hospital

surgeons, you can spot them, said alice

whose donor expired from an alcoholic

seizure,

not me, I can’t spot them

to me they’re simply tall men

Zaki with his black hasid-like jacket and glasses

fast-talkin’ Campos with black hair like moss

sit down with me under a tree and

we’ll watch the pennypack flow by,

men, who studied hard, knew their

tables and their chemistry

walked slowly up the ladder to the

top floor,

their appointment with the Demings

crossed off their calendar

as ours continues day by day



have i changed?

i speak softly to my new baby for life

caressing her under the warmth of my

tie-dyed pajamas

then give the trying-hard twins

a feel on my back

and think to myself

When you were a child of 12 and

rode the palomino at camp cardinal in Ohio

a voice whispered in your ear like the

angel gabriel did mary

you will grow up to have moodswings

you will want to kill yourself with pills

your body will be cut open at 65

but you will survive

you will survive.