Mary Morris
Appointment with Dr. Siegel
Across the neurosurgeon’s massive desk,
sits a small pot with a brain cactus.
Maybe it’s not funny. I pretend I don’t see it.
He speaks of a ten-hour surgery
as if it storms today, yet tomorrow
we set sail for sunny Grenada.
Sometimes tools resemble weapons
and so it was I left that office within
a concrete steel obelisk of a medical spire
in the boom-box of Spanish Harlem
where I met the A train, left with the decision
of whether to be blinded and paralyzed
by an operation which would obliterate
the malformation or take my chances.
I was a new mother.
My blouse flowered with milk.
Mary Morris is the author of the new book of poetry, Enter Water, Swimmer, published in spring of 2018 by Texas Review Press through Texas A&M University Consortium. Her poems are widely published, appearing in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, The Massachusetts Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She received the Rita Dove Award for poetry and was invited to read at the Library of Congress for the “Poet and the Poem” program, which subsequently aired on National Public Radio. Additionally, Morris received the New Mexico Discovery Award and recently won the 2019 Western Humanities Review Mountain West Prize, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She graduated from Oklahoma University and continued studying poetry at Long Island University. Morris has taught poetry in the schools and at Salem College. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.water400.org
Return to May 2019 Edition
Across the neurosurgeon’s massive desk,
sits a small pot with a brain cactus.
Maybe it’s not funny. I pretend I don’t see it.
He speaks of a ten-hour surgery
as if it storms today, yet tomorrow
we set sail for sunny Grenada.
Sometimes tools resemble weapons
and so it was I left that office within
a concrete steel obelisk of a medical spire
in the boom-box of Spanish Harlem
where I met the A train, left with the decision
of whether to be blinded and paralyzed
by an operation which would obliterate
the malformation or take my chances.
I was a new mother.
My blouse flowered with milk.
Mary Morris is the author of the new book of poetry, Enter Water, Swimmer, published in spring of 2018 by Texas Review Press through Texas A&M University Consortium. Her poems are widely published, appearing in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, The Massachusetts Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She received the Rita Dove Award for poetry and was invited to read at the Library of Congress for the “Poet and the Poem” program, which subsequently aired on National Public Radio. Additionally, Morris received the New Mexico Discovery Award and recently won the 2019 Western Humanities Review Mountain West Prize, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She graduated from Oklahoma University and continued studying poetry at Long Island University. Morris has taught poetry in the schools and at Salem College. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.water400.org
Return to May 2019 Edition