This is poetry moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, and professor of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Caregiving is hard, particularly when we are required to make extremely difficult decisions for those we love most. In today’s poem, “Yes/No to Neurosurgery for My Son,” Nicole Miyashiro recounts an impossible but inescapable choice. She does so during what would appear—on the surface at least—to be an otherwise ordinary day.
Nicole Miyashiro (she/her) grew up in Media, lived in Philadelphia, and resides in State College, PA. She holds an MFA from Rosemont College and has spent time as a writer-in-residence with the PA Center for the Book – Penn State University Libraries, a grantee of the Can Serrat [Canne Serrat] International Art Residency, and a resident of Vermont Studio Center. Her work appears in CALYX, The Hudson Review, The Nasty Women Poets anthology (Lost Horse Press), and elsewhere.
A beautiful day organized by repetition: getting dressed, washing hair, eating cereal. But what happens when unfathomable decisions join the routine? As a parent of a child with medical complexities, poet Nicole Miyashiro faces one inescapable choice after another. Through personification, she portrays what many caregivers face on a daily basis.
Here’s —
“Yes/No to Neurosurgery for My Son”
Hell is not a hideous thing.
It washes its face and puts on
deodorant.
It peers over at the clock,
which ticks on as usual, and it slides
a fresh shirt over its shampooed
head. Hell
pours flakes and raisins
into a cereal bowl
without spilling, pours
2% milk without a stray drip, takes
spoon to mouth with nothing
to slurp.
Hell is on time –
punctual and patient –
not willy-nilly, fireball chaos.
Hell looks
at that same morning sun I do
from its warm and cozy
space within and says, “Look
at that beautiful sky. Look
at those clouds,
round and knitted close
like the spongy curves
of your little boy’s
brain.
An earlier version of this poem first appeared in Atlas + Alice: a magazine of intersections.
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That was “Yes/No to Neurosurgery for My Son” by Nicole Miyashiro. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at WPSU.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
