By Doug Van Hooser
thirty years later the photo stares out
captured in memory’s spider perfect web
the message a whisper something
not to be said a silent sting in
a field of daffodils a chorus
sings from the winter battled
ground
a small girl kneels in the trumpets of
spring’s triumph shrouded in pink
hair shorn like a religious edict
relapse round two for chemo’s chalice
the gently waved black strands a sacrifice
after a year’s growth better to lose half
an identity at once and let the rest fall
away slowly at least for mom a
lesson from the first round of steroid swelling
poison puking alopecia
there’s a smile that accepts instruction
at five and father says it a trust the bees
won’t sting like the needles taps
aspirations the medicine
a backdrop of barren oaks stretch out
their limbs to catch but they are rigid
frozen unforgiving waiting the surge
of green the happy chatter of wind in leaves
Doug Van Hooser is a playwright active at Three Cat Productions in Chicago and Chicago Dramatists Theatre. His poetry can be found in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Chariton Review, Gravel, and Stoneboat Literary Journal among other publications. His fiction has appeared in Crack the Spine, Red Earth Review, and The Riding Light Review.
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