Three Poems from Our Cancers by Dan O’Brien

1

Waking up
middle-aged
descending

to a kitchen
like the inside
of a lantern

with the babe
a flickering
babble when

you pause
at the running
faucet to ask Love

can you feel
my breast O
no O no

is all
I can say
collapsing

finally
the spark
catching

2

Another morning
sirens roused us
to the specter

of a businessman
static with ash
He was confused

where he was
On Water Street
we craned our necks

receipts cascading
the exponential rose
blooming through

the second tower
An old woman fell
to her knees O

no O no How
your tears then
scattered the road

out of the blast
breathing our choking
malediction lost

in the crush of
the multitudes
reborn from dust

Thank you
for crying
for us

66

Midnight
we revisit
the abysmal

spasming fluids
the putrid clog
that gapes its

humors pouting
the slit
that spurts

The resident rips
my catheter out
like she’s rooting

a rattler
from its den
apparently devoid

of any feeling
for my howling I
who have never

even broken
a bone yet
here I am

made one of them
sudden denizen
of this the

simultaneous city
where the unwell
crowd the under-

ground a chorus
of blackout drunks
blaspheming

a princess groaning
in the throes of
influenza while

a crone is
receiving her
devastation beside

a wood nymph with
an ankle snapped
bouldering

Look at them
remarks my wife
about a family with

a newborn needing
a feeding tube
They almost seem

content to fold
their blanket humming
a tune from some

fairytale when
the mangled body
of a bewildered girl’s

yanked salvaged from
the ambulance’s
clanging maw

Help me
she’s imploring
contorting

upon the
rotating kicking
clawing at her

healers who must
beat her and bind her
to save her

life persisting
in reality
violently

Dan O’Brien is a poet and playwright who lives in Los Angeles. His debut poetry collection War Reporter (CB Editions & Hanging Loose Press, 2013) received the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His new books are A Story that Happens: On playwriting, childhood, & other traumas (CB Editions) and Our Cancers (Acre Books), both publishing in 2021.