Emblems of Without You, a Review of Nolcha Fox’s “Cancer Isn’t Just a Constellation” by Pete Mladinic

Front cover of “Cancer Isn’t Just a Constellation”

These tightly wrought poems chart a mother-daughter emotional landscape, a heart chart of mother-daughter nearness, distance, and daughter memory. They are about the poet’s mother’s illness and death, but more so life, the mother’s life, the mother and daughter’s life together, and the daughter’s life without her mother. The poems reflect the poet’s struggle in dealing with her mother’s loss.

Fox is inclusive, at every step, taking in her reader. Her struggle is also her reader’s struggle and her celebrations of her mother’s life, of the mother-daughter’s life together, also the reader’s. Cancer, so many “have been there.” Fight cancer. Fox’s weapons are words from the heart. Her poems evoke dread, grief, and ultimately celebration.

Dread is visceral. When it comes it overwhelms. The first line of the first poem, “Breath” ends with “cancer.” “Not That Hole” begins: “My mother’s cancer grips our thoughts.” Dread overwhelms. This is the second half of “Brain Freeze:”

I stick my sorry, soggy brain
into a plastic bag,
and stuff it in the freezer
until it comprehends
it must accept the winds of chaos.

The winds of chaos blow through the door of her heart. In her heart she is with her mother, sharing the dreaded news, suffering as her mother suffers, and, like her mother, “grateful for another day.”

When grief hits, it hits home, “at odd hours of the day, when others watch the soaps or meet for cribbage or for tea.” Not for coffee but for tea, a more genteel thing, as these others go about their days, untouched by the winds of chaos, the daughter-poet stands on the summit of alone, in the hard hours. In “I’m a Fool,” she speaks to “pain that can’t be answered,” in her hour of grief. The mother-daughter nearness and the daughter’s empathy are found in:

I Wear Your Heart

around my neck.
It matters not if gold or bronze,
if pretty pennies bought it.
It matters not it was engraved
with words too small and hard to read.
It matters that you thought of me,
and asked I think of you.

“Terminal” poignantly conveys grief. “My mother’s packing her bags and leaving me.” In “Expiration,” “we’re a phantom embrace.” In “Dark” “I pour some dark roast in his cup. He grins and drinks it up.”

Ultimately, these poems celebrate her mother’s life. “You Sing” concludes: “You’ll never know how high and far your song will soar, it’s not the end, you’ll always be.” The poet inherits her mother’s vivacity, her joy of life, her caring for others.

Her mother’s wry humor is now the poet’s, evoked memorably in “Destination Wedding.” “Worry and misery meet at a funeral and fall in love.” They plan a wedding. “Why not invite the entire world? Everybody knows Worry and Misery.” They decide their wedding will be in a nursing home, alas “Too late. All the guests are dead.” Weddings are celebrations, and this poem, with its irony and exacting details “The venue, coffee, and flowers are free” is no exception.

In “Between Countries,” the poet imagines her mother on a journey. “She is tired. She wants to sit in her mother’s lap. All she needs is a little spine. She will have it soon. To imagine is to celebrate her mother’s life. Consider this poem, in its entirety:

Fluttering
 
A butterfly beats its bent wings against the back of my eyes. 
"Look, look! See how the maple tree leaves are a burnt cinnamon 
carpet on the ground." My eyes flutter open. "See how first snow 
is Swiss cheese in the sun. Hear it crunch and crack under 
running doggie paws." My ears flutter open. The butterfly bangs 
against my inner skull. "Smell the crisp last breaths of autumn in 
the wind. Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t the end beautiful?"

Isn’t the end beautiful? This poem, striking in its originality, and the power of its verbs, fights cancer. The poet, at the height of her poetic powers, says No to cancer, Yes to life.

A final note: in the Forward, Nolcha Fox says, “My mother was my champion.” What she says in her poems, she says for all of us.

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Garden of Neuro Publishing
43 pages
$10.00
https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Isnt-Just-Constellation-Diagnosis/dp/B0CNTKXSGP/