Stigmata

This week's assignment is to read a ton of poetry, then write our own poem to share with the class. Here is the one I wrote. Warning, its a bit bleak.
June 8, 2010

Stigmata

Radiation tattoos riveted to my hips
Become my Juden armband.
I am marked.
As if my chemo naked head,
My gray leathered skin,
The thousand bottles of drugs on my dresser
Signs too small to warn.
Turn aside. Don’t look. Don’t risk knowing.

I bear in my body the torture of experiments
Debilitating as Dachau,
Quietly endure bioptic chunks of flesh carved out.
You could die, my papers say; others have.
I am forced to sign consent,
To march to the chambers unaided.
To willingly stretch out my arms for stabbing,
To calmly submit while they chop and slice, radiate and sterilize.
To swallow their poison as if it were milkshake wholesome.

My body slides into the maw of a hundred scanners
Like so much tortured refuse stuffed into Auschwitz ovens.
I hang suspended between hope and death
Suffering quiet agony while onlookers stare and worry.

I bleed.
I cry.
I thirst.
I nearly die.
God, have you forsaken me?

Into the silence He suddenly slips,
Surrounding me with sinewy arms.
His wounds overwrite mine, obliterate the horror.
His love enwombs me, cocoons me.

I am not alone.
He has been in this valley before.
On the other side radiation tattoos translate to envious accolades of honor
Beyond what this dastardly dimension dare demand.

I slip my wounded self into his nail scarred hands and walk on.