Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright©;All Rights Reserved by Author
Chemistry
by
Mary Kennan Herbert
Today’s lesson for all you cancer freaks:
the dermatologist spritzed liquid nitrogen
onto precancerous freckles across my cheeks.
Those teen-age spots like to heckle:
always on the phone, snickering: yah yah,
you need an oncology guru, maybe Dr. Jekyll.
Zap. Spray paint. He does what he must.
Scanning his handiwork on the subdivisions
of my skin, he then asks, how’s that cyst?
(The little one on my left breast. Is it behaving?)
He keeps a log of bumps, all those stumps
in my forest, fault lines, dirt and paving.
Logged, the trees of my flesh reveal
profitability, labeled carefully by the good doc
who maps my hide for the harvest, or the kill.
Contributor's Notes...
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Mary Kennan Herbert now lives in Brooklyn, NY, and teaches
literature and writing courses at colleges and universities in New York City. Her poems have
appeared in literary journals in 17 different countries. Six collections of her poems have been
published as of 2004, and her work has won several awards.
