BRCA 1: A DOUBLE TRIOLET

My body is a book gone to press too soon
the pages still filled with typos
—a dark line of text where tumors bloom.
My body is a book gone to press too soon
with chemo in the mornings and pills in the afternoon
and all for a few letters on a chromosome transposed.
My body is a book gone to press too soon
the pages still filled with typos.

The strands of my dna are filled with typos
like the pages of a book gone to press to soon
and once again the legacy of an absent father imposed
by the strands of my dna filled with typos.
It’s a line stretching back to the Tyburn gallows
—as if this gallows humor might make me immune
to the strands of my dna filled with typos
like the pages of a book gone to press to soon.

AND JESUS, PRETENDING

I still don’t know how to speak
to sick people. In the waiting room
other women share—inspirational books
and Jesus, pretending Cancer is a gift, or
test of faith. I’ve had enough

of tests: mammogram and multiple
choice. Even those, who remove
hijab or sari before sliding, open faced
into the hospital gown, seem able
to transcend the savior’s name and back 

rooms of the hospital; they share freely
in the conversation. Elsewhere, I have faith
in sarcasm and bad jokes, a line
clearly not to be crossed behind
such waiting room curtains.

Rita Costello received her BFA from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, her MFA from Wichita State University in Kansas, and her Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She has taught Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing classes at colleges and universities in Kansas, Arkansas and Louisiana, as well as at American and International universities in China. For well over a decade she was the Director of Freshman and Sophomore English at McNeese State University, where she is now the Assistant Department Head and also teaches drama, graphic novel, and women’s studies courses among other literature and pedagogy courses. She has published poetry, short fiction and artwork in journals such as Glimmer Train, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), The Chattahoochee Review, Potomac Review, Seattle Review, Baltimore Review, New Delta Review, The Panhandler, Plainsongs, Fireweed, Hawai’i Review. Her poem “Shadow trees” won the Glimmer Train poetry prize, and “Wingspread” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.