Other Poets/Other Poems

Anonymous, Issue 17

Antler, Issue 36

Amy Beeder, Issue 16

Boyd W. Bensen, Issue 31

Donna Biffar, Issue 15

Kimberly Blaeser, Issue 27

P. W. Boisvert, Issue 39

Rick Cannon, Issue 28

Jared Carter, Issue 24

David Chorlton, Issue 40

Billy Collins, Issue 1, Issue 18

Steven Coughlin, Issue 39

Philip Dacey, Issue 6

Denise Duhamel, Issue 13

Stephen Dunn, Issue 34

Stuart Dybek, Issue 41

Dave Etter, Issue 14

Norma Hammond, Issue 22

David Hernandez, Issue 23

Susan Holahan, Issue 12

Angela Just, Issue 32

Lisa Kadous, Issue 20

Julie King, Issue 30

Lyn Lifshin, Issue 19

Mary Lucina, Issue 26

Louis McKee, Issue 5

Pamela Miller, Issue 8

Lisel Mueller, Issue 29

Alexis Orgera, Issue 35

James Reiss, Issue 26

Len Roberts, Issue 2

Kristopher Saknussemm, Issue 10

R. T. Smith, Issue 38

Cathy Song, Issue 21

Judith Valente, Issue 37

Charles Harper Webb, Issue 25

Mary Ann Waters, Issue 11

J. D. Whitney, Issue 33

Bayla Winters, Issue 3

Lila Zeiger, Issue 4

Return to Sample Poems

Cancer

The word alone could erupt into a tumor:
bean-sized, heavy as a fishing weight,
tiny but ripe, and warty as a winter squash.
Or an insidious mole, daily growing
darker under clothes like fatal ink. A disease

like exotic seeds that slip across borders
and flourish, crowding and corrupting
the native plants, breeding in the blind
quickness of vines. Voracious. As inevitable

as neglected summer cabbage
that unharvested, unfolds madly
into an ugly purple flower. Huge
and hungry thick-veined blossom—
I never planted that.

--Amy Beeder
Copyright © 1996 by Free Lunch Arts Alliance