Preemptive Strike
by Tracy Mishkin
“The skin is like a million mouths . . . going straight into your bloodstream.”
director, Organic Consumers Association
If one day I sat in the doctor's office getting very bad news,
my carcinogenic history would flash before my eyes:
chasing DDT trucks down the street, summer camp
with bug spray high in N, N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide,
eating lamb in England the year after Chernobyl
sent a feathery plume to the west. All the harmless things
I ever did would line up like lottery balls, concatenating,
clicking into inevitability. I would go home and smash
the dishes, then try to spin my rotten luck into
something entertaining, like the man who told people
hosting boring parties, “Sorry, I have cancer,” then sailed
for Antarctica; or the woman who said her tumor
should have a name, and asked her friends to help her
think one up—Lord knows they would have preferred
to make a casserole. Decorum is so easily cast aside:
lymphoma is a license to read Harry Potter
while drinking whiskey in your underwear. And who
will call you to the dinner table? We may not whisper
the word “cancer” anymore, but it's a game-changer,
life-stopper, conversation-killer like nobody's business.
Just in case it's waiting for me like a pink slip or a mugger
who knows my route, screw you, cancer, screw you, right now.
Gyroscope Review !9