Post-Surgery Pashmina

By Martha Duncan

Ten, an important number: ten years to grow a tumor,
ten hours to cut it out.
While punctures blackened my arm,
I remembered being ten with a wart on my knee,
wanting to keep it as part of me.
Nicked open, I went away for ten hours.

I'd been away for a long time, but not like this.
Some people thought I'd been duped by a man, nabbed by a cult, or kidnapped into old age:
not johnny-on-the-spot as before, but
spouting foreign gospel,
losing my words on the phone.

Not knowing I could still
fear darkness like a child,
I went in and under the saw
and came out wondering
if my skull was still my own.

Transformed and transfixed,
not informed whose blood I used,
I woke from mists
and talked to people
as if I'd actually been there all along.
They gave me their best.

For the rest, the swishing in my head was
a scary storm, fall leaves rattling in
torrents, till the Bindu appeared,
and the nurse to rate the pain, give
pills to help me sleep or at least
slake the ache for a while.

She wrapped soft boots to massage
my clot-susceptible legs.
For the post-surgery debut,
she wound and tucked the fringe
of my pashmina scarf to cover the shave marks.
Not bad, I said, to the mirror.

The bouquet of primary colors
stood in black silhouette on
the nightstand each time I woke
to the monitor beeps
fading in and out
as doors opened and closed.

Now everything seems to be 
happening again for the first time.
I often feel I'm being re-populated
by people I've known. All my life.
I listen to their voices when I'm alone.
Add my own. Play the game, close to the bone.

About the Author

Martha Duncan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and for the past forty-seven years has lived in California, Massachusetts, and Maine. She has published three chapbooks: Being and Breakfast, Just Enough Springs, and Beanblossom. She is working on two memoirs: Grocery Girl and Almost Like a Mother.

Martha’s poems have appeared in Puckerbrush Review, Aputamkon Review, and Four Zoas Night House Anthology. Her short short story "Grandmother's Funeral" was included in the I Thought My Father Was God collection sponsored by the NPR National Story Project. Recently, her poem "Abortion, 1968" was accepted by the Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights for publication on their web site. Martha has published articles on women and literacy in The Change Agent, a publication of The New England Literacy Resource Center in Boston.

Martha received a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.Ed. from Lesley College. As an adult and community educator in Boston and Sullivan, Maine, she worked for 30 years with students from U.S. and 47 other countries.

March 17, 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of Martha’s brain surgery!