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All About the Tumor


by Bill Yarrow


Stupidity is not a mask; it is the face
and it is the face that betrays us
always. That is the lesson of mirrors.

I was apoplectic about corruption.
I appealed to outside magic, ideas
bright and dark. Sonya solaced me.

Flirting with eternity, strangling
the larynx of the sky, I stood on
edges and matriculated fervency.

I read in the phonemes of the trees
"Happiness is the habit of right reason
practicing vice." My course was set.

I fell in with felons, derogatory
men who lived on the verge of
mercy. They sequenced my DNA

for it was all about the tumor, you see.
For the health of the state, it had to be
ripped away. We used mindfulness.

I recuperated in Sonya's arms. Some days
we think back and remember Abelard:
"It's a wonderful life—until it's not."

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