Fear
If the pain doesn’t come back,
what will I write about? Will the poems
have tendon and teeth? I didn’t get
right the sonnet of all its colors.
I did not find the exact dagger of phrase
about the long loss of my life.
Hope is all I do and am.
I don’t think I’m poet enough
to make you taste this mango;
or see that sutured sunset unless
from a hospital bed.
I was good for carving.
There will be kisses, music, street names.
Loved ones will go where the gone do.
What if I don’t want to (write it: can’t)
write about these things.
What if I would rather feel
than create feeling?
What then? Go ahead.
Copyright © 2024 by Liv Mammone. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 3, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“When I wrote this poem, I was nine months into Botox injection treatments to reduce spasticity in my legs. I have cerebral palsy, and these injections all but eliminated the debilitating muscle pain with which I had been struggling for over a decade. At a time where there was tremendous gratitude, finding myself without pain was also the major organizing principle that structured my daily and creative life. In the simplest language possible, I wanted to address myself as I interrogated new measurements for success beyond resilience to physical suffering.”
—Liv Mammone
Liv Mammone
