Fissured Tongue Series
Two Poems:
Colors Floating on Water
&
Elegy For My Breast
by Amy Haddad
Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI | May 2025
Colors Floating on Water
&
Elegy For My Breast
by Amy Haddad
Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI | May 2025
"Trampoline" by Ann Wong WanYee. Oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, 2024
Colors Floating on Water
A blown-out eggshell
marbleized pink and chick-yellow
from an Easter long past
wedged into a shot glass.
A bouquet of dried hydrangea
friable in death, a mere breath
would dislodge the petals.
These things cannot survive
the move to our new house.
The egg embodies Good Friday
a family tradition, dipping
empty shells through an oil
slick of colors floating on water.
Each baptism left artless perfection
in its wake. Water and vinegar
I faithfully applied to the soil, kept
the mopheads royal blue but they will
fade to pink then white
with new owners in our house.
The Florentine florescence of the egg,
flowers holding their dignity in blues
cannot go into the trash. Outside, I crush
the egg and dried blooms,
shards of shell and blue dropped to the snow
where the flowers grow in spring.
marbleized pink and chick-yellow
from an Easter long past
wedged into a shot glass.
A bouquet of dried hydrangea
friable in death, a mere breath
would dislodge the petals.
These things cannot survive
the move to our new house.
The egg embodies Good Friday
a family tradition, dipping
empty shells through an oil
slick of colors floating on water.
Each baptism left artless perfection
in its wake. Water and vinegar
I faithfully applied to the soil, kept
the mopheads royal blue but they will
fade to pink then white
with new owners in our house.
The Florentine florescence of the egg,
flowers holding their dignity in blues
cannot go into the trash. Outside, I crush
the egg and dried blooms,
shards of shell and blue dropped to the snow
where the flowers grow in spring.
Elegy For My Breast
After my breasts were sliced off, a sliver was kept
to dice and smear onto slides,
but where did the rest of my breasts go?
The left one, the first removed, was severed
from me to detect the spread of cancer
inside the honeycomb of my ducts.
(Everywhere, it turned out.)
But what of the remains?
Tossed with other medical waste? Burned
in the hospital crematorium, if such a thing exists?
Buried or burned, there is no place I can visit,
leave flowers, or whisper thanks for the waves
of pleasure and sense of wholeness
my breast gave me despite the affliction within.
Years later when the right breast met
the same fate, there was no dissection. The whole breast,
cleft at a go. I choose to picture my right breast intact,
floating in expensive eau de vie. Like a pear
grown inside a curved bottle, then cut from the tree
that sustained it, my breast glows supple and ripe
with the illusion of life.
to dice and smear onto slides,
but where did the rest of my breasts go?
The left one, the first removed, was severed
from me to detect the spread of cancer
inside the honeycomb of my ducts.
(Everywhere, it turned out.)
But what of the remains?
Tossed with other medical waste? Burned
in the hospital crematorium, if such a thing exists?
Buried or burned, there is no place I can visit,
leave flowers, or whisper thanks for the waves
of pleasure and sense of wholeness
my breast gave me despite the affliction within.
Years later when the right breast met
the same fate, there was no dissection. The whole breast,
cleft at a go. I choose to picture my right breast intact,
floating in expensive eau de vie. Like a pear
grown inside a curved bottle, then cut from the tree
that sustained it, my breast glows supple and ripe
with the illusion of life.
***
|
About the Author
Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse, and educator whose poetry has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Aji, Oberon Literary Journal, Abandoned Mine, Rogue Agent, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, Rinky Dink Press, Intima, Red-Headed Stepchild, and several anthologies. Her chapbook, The Geography of Kitchens, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her first poetry collection, An Otherwise Healthy Woman, was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in 2022. Read more about her poetry at www.amyhaddadpoetry.com. *About the Work
“Colors Floating on Water” was originally titled, “Moving,” because the actual act of moving to a new home is so full of memories of what one must leave behind in the “old” home. I wanted to focus on the small, fragile objects that hold such memories. “Elegy for My Breasts” is a lament for what is “dead” or lost. In this case, the loss of breasts because of breast cancer. The poem offers a way to mourn a deep personal loss but also a different way to see what was lost — the transformation of the breast into a consoling image. *About the Author’s Process
I write and review almost daily and not in any order. I am in two writing groups that require “new” work (no more than five poems for one group) monthly so that makes me develop new work on a schedule. I have two ongoing projects/topics that I return to when I cannot think of anything to write. I also have drafts of a collection and chapbook most of the time. I dig into those and work on revisions and rearrangement of the poems. I think this sort of looking at your work as a compilation of poems is an important part of the writing process. |
About the Artist
Ann Wong Wan Yee obtained a BA in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2020, and currently lives and work in Hong Kong and Sweden. "I use different media to record and reflect on trifles in life. In my works, I explore the possibilities among media by duplicating, extracting, covering or simplifying individual elements and then combining them in a specific way." https://wanyeeann.com/ Wong's art piece, "The Thorns of Anxiety," is this volume's featured cover art. |
