Farewell to Atomic City (Minneapolis Radiation Oncology)
They tell me I'm a winner, the strange days
and circus side show in the rearview.
I'm never sure of anything so I'll keep
my ticket to the car crash just the same.
The radium girls tell me it's time to go
home, the world will end
another day but not before I’m able to break
a few more promises.
I've nothing left to prove but still
feel locked in place with no more use
for what they’re peddling. The girls kiss
my forehead, say I'm all the rage, the luckiest
dog to ever wreck a bone, and next time
I’m knock knockin’ on heaven’s door,
I’ll lay the badge on the ground and my guns
will be strappedloadedready to draw.
Love is a destiny moving forward
We’ve stopped living inside ideas,
cloak the world in reality;
birds scream in light
and our love
and our love is
and our love is a crucible
of ash
of fire
of of of of
tell me again how you will save my life
how it
how it will
how it will change
explode like a supernova;
eyes too sensitive to see
in the dark
and a coat of many cloths and a car revving
in the middle of the night
an engine gunned
a warning sign
and half a world away a bird screams
and our love is
an Atomic Blaster®, a stereophonic radiation symphony;
nuclear rain pattering on a skylight left open by mistake.
when bukowski was told he had cancer
i bet he stared it down
offered it a beer
blew cigarette smoke
in its face and asked:
what the fuck do you want?
you can have this decrepit
old body
but i'm going to keep my goddamn
poems, you lousy excuse for a disease
there’s nothing poetic about fear,
losing love, and drinking
the last drop of hope;
it’s hard to be heroic
when the woman you adore
doesn’t trust you
enough to let you share
her bed for the night, when every
sweaty night is a knife’s edge
between remembering
trying to forget
trying to recreate memories
that feel like they no longer
belong to you.
Listening to Dylan’s Time Out of Mind at midnight on the day of the last radiation treatment
I tell myself once the rogue cells
have been brought in the fold
I can forget promises made;
can dare myself back to everyday
-quotidian-normal, leave death
where it belongs;
suspended in disbelief,
a postponed inevitability
tucked into nooks and crannies
of mundanity;
and when the clock tick-tock-ticks
into tomorrow, I’m faced
with the divinity of newness,
and nowhere left to hide.
These poems about cancer and recovery are from Atomic City, a chapbook by Alex Stolis.
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press.
