This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Cancer Voodoo by Melissa C. Johnson, released by Diode Editions in 2022.
content warning for cancer
Escape Artist
When I lie down and fall
into half-sleep—listening
for the bed alarm—
I arise in her body—
skin torn and bleeding—
not sure how I got there.
The rails on the hospice
bed can’t keep me in.
I slither under,
reach over,
slide between
the footboard and rail end.
Small, lithe, flexible—
I never remember my legs
won’t walk anymore
until I find myself on the floor.
They pat the blood away,
cover the torn skin, ask
questions I can’t answer.
Melissa C. Johnson is a Southern poet living in Central Pennsylvania where she serves as Associate Vice Provost and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her first poetry chapbook, Looking Twice at the World, was published by Stepping Stones Press and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Diode Editions published her second chapbook, Cancer Voodoo, poems from which have been featured at American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Her poetry has also been published at NELLE, Waccamaw, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere.
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