Chuka Susan Chesney

Post Mastectomy Shoppe

On Brand Boulevard in a suburb of Angels

is a corset shop a lingerie store

Inside you’ll find along with sexy bras

a full array of breast prostheses

I visit the shop with my friend Alexis

after her mastectomy

as she recovers

The breast forms have nipples

made of plastic

Alexis tries one on behind a curtain

The form fits neatly

into the pocket

of a wire-free bra

beneath her blouse

The owner steps inside to assist Alexis

who’s sobbing as she fastens

the hooks into eyes

The owner says Don’t cry

or I’ll start crying

While Alexis swipes her card for bras and plastic

we noticed nipple labels in the case below

peony and rosewood-tinged areolae

similar to wreaths

and other stickers

Alexis pastes on backs

of Christmas envelopes

After a while

Alexis decides

her new breast forms

protrude like ping pong balls

She drives to Nordstrom and purchases

some more

says the new ones

are homey like

squishy bean bags

Chuka Susan Chesney, a graduate of Art Center College of Design, is an artist, poet, short-story writer, and editor. Her award-winning paintings and sculpture have been shown in galleries across the country. Her poems and short stories have been published on three continents. Chesney's anthology of poetry and art "Lottery Blues", coedited by Ulrica Perkins will be published by Little Red Tree in 2020.

Comments

Karl Koweski

retaliation it was two weeks after you returned from rehab, dad I found the first vodka bottle, a Smirnoff pint, stashed beneath the driver's seat of your Ford. I propped the empty on the dashboard like a bobble-head. I didn't tell you this then, but... going into my room and leaving my dog-eared copies of Penthouse on my pillow next to the Vaseline... that was a pretty good comeback. Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Day now living in a valley in rural Alabama. His latest collection of poetry from Roadside Press "Abandoned By All Things" is out now.

Ed Dorn's # 22 From Twenty-four Love Poems

from Jacket The strengthy message here in #22 of 24 Love Songs can be summed up in two lines: ['There is/no sense to beauty. . .' and '. . .How/ the world is shit/ and I mean all of it] What I also like about this brief poem is the interplay between the title of the book and the subject of the poems (love/anti-love (which is not hate)): it's all a mass of contradictions, like love. And I have to say that the shorter poems of the Love Songs and the last book he wrote before dying (Chemo Sábe) seem to me much better and more memorable than the Slinger/Gunslinger poems. These (generally) later poems probably attempt less stylistically, but are more sure-handed, hacked from a soap bar, maybe. Easy to use, but disa...

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