Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha, Nebraska, and has published in various journals on 4 continents, receiving his MFA from the University of Iowa.  His latest book is The Sower from CyberNet Press.

My Mother With Two Illnesses

I thought it'd be the cancer that would take her,
or chemo– how it ravaged to the bone,
but covid slipped inside, a heated reaper,
and turned her lungs to crust and eyes to stone.

The Stonehenge of machines around her rumbles
as tubes come from her innards like a bloom
to moisten her, although her body crumbles–
my older sister weeps, then leaves the room.

I watch the news as outbreaks breach the world 
and keep my earbuds in so I can't hear
her wheeze in pain, her callused hands are curled
upward, and she's lost the last of hair.

Which one shows more mercy– this or cancer?
Mercy has no part, that's my answer.

Stave Off

I came late to the health game from
years of wine plummets and cigarette
sins, of gluten glutton, glucose bogs.
My stomach is processed to the point 
of no return– cancer waits there as it
did in my mother, as it did in the old
esophagus of my father before it was
snipped and flung to the biohazard
bin.  Greasy meat mornings before
before school paved the way for the
cholesterol clinging in my veins, as
well as sedentary days in the dark for
my irreversible belly fat that rumbles
and worsens my pounded bone spurs.

Is it too late for me?  I run on tarred,
inclined sidewalks in humidity till
I think I've worked off my carbs of
late-night binging and candy gargling.
I do Russian twists, trembling planks
and salute the Avocado in my salads
pocked with pickles and spinach bits.
Soy is god and runs in the rapids of
my veins, flushing out the remnants 
of red meat and steroids that gristled
my stature like a dried swine ear till
I hunched and hissed.  Now I am taut
and sing: give me your wet marathon,
treasure me for the protein that I am.

Blind Spot

A broken heart is blind,
lost in darkness, done with love,
like mine, it's broken all the time.

Love is hard to find,
to hold onto, to prove,
cruel enough to leave the heart blind,

mended in the aftermath by rhyme,
and then the heart can move
on, but that won't happen all the time.

Some say love is in the mind,
that there's no sore heart to soothe.
The place of love is hard to find, I'm blind

to everything when I'm
living pain, to fellow sufferers who've
shaken my hand or asked the time.

I'm sorry to them, for only seeing mine,
for not seeing their breaking down from love,
but a broken heart is blind,
it's broken all the time.