National Poetry Month Day 3: Safia Jama
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
Biopsy, Washington Heights Location
The 66th Street waiting
room is much nicer,
albeit more impersonal.
“Miss Bower” is called into
the exam room—she’s straight
outta The Bell Jar with green
sneakers and green eyes.
The other women speak
softly, in Spanish.
The walls are blank—
the nurse pulls
the seafoam green curtain, closed.
Leafy pattern—
Palm fronds? Weed?
Dad smoked weed those last
few months—must’ve busted
his pride, he who swore never again
after that party in ‘68, driving high,
scared shitless.
The waiting room at
66th street has an orchid
and a vase of fresh flowers—the gowns
are blue—here,
for some reason, they are pink.
I hate the pink—bubble-gum pink.
Just before the biopsy, I lost
my evil eye—
I’ve had it nearly
five years—
yet today, taking off
my necklace,
it jumped off
the chain like
a spark—gone!
I nodded. “Okay.”
Pocketed my other charm.
Clear quartz.
Earlier this month,
I met a witch
in Eataly—
She asked to share
my table, eyeing my
necklace:
evil eye, clear
quartz—
“Who made it?” she asked.
“I did. I mean, I selected
the pieces at a shop in New Orleans.
I needed something.”
“It looks like a battle,” she said. “Between the good
and the evil.”
“Oh? Is that bad?”
“No, no,” she said. “You follow your intuition.
What feels right to you.”
Her bottom row of teeth were small and yellow,
but her eyes were clear. She
told me a very long story about a stone that healed
one of her massage – or was it acupuncture?—clients.
Or maybe it was personal training.
She didn’t seem like the exercising type, but she knew a lot about what
she called “healing stones.” She told me about
those they call “the keeper of the stones.” I glanced
at my watch, internally.
My office hours began in ten minutes.
“I need to go, but nice meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
“You never know,” she said.
Later,
I thought, she’s definitely a witch.
But that didn’t spook me at all. In that
way, I’ve changed.
That’s why I didn’t go looking for that evil eye
in the exam room. I decided it was a sign—time to
let go of that evil eye. But I’ll keep the clear
quartz, the same as I used to wear in 1989.
London. New York.
*
Now the evil eye is lodged at the 1 o’clock
spot in my right breast. They found it on the scan,
and mark it with a tiny, titanium chip.
“Like an ice cream sprinkle,”
the nurse said.
Sylvia Plath has gone from the waiting room
and the ladies jack up the volume
on Spanish news.
There is a public health emergency
and here we are, sitting around
in pink gowns.
There is something I am trying to understand
this week—about life, death,
and change.
Friday, March 13th, 2020
***
Author photo by Linda Ibbotson