My brother sends a picture: our mother
holding a tube up through her soft white hat,
smiling. I think she has her lipstick on.
She’s just had a hole bored into her skull.
How lucky I am, she says, to be in the best hospital,
the best brain tumor center in the world,
to have the best doctor. They say he worked
on one of the Kennedy’s brains.
Fourteen-month median lifespan
and no cure. There’s nothing for you
if you don’t have a tether to hope.
And so the catheter of polio,
the virus recombined, injected
into the tumor. The body attacks
the virus and kills the tumor.
“It’s like polio was made
for this purpose,” Dr. Friedman says.
Next shot she’s walking out the sliding
doors: vibrant, waving.
But healing brings swelling.
Two weeks later she’ll black her eye falling,
barely able to shuffle, slurring
from swelling in the parietal lobe.
I will Google brain maps, read her MRI.
Something presses against the supramarginal
something or other that tells you where
you are in space and against the spot
that registers empathy. Wait. There’s
a physical location for empathy?
It can be damaged? I don’t know shit.
I don’t know how she has her faith, don’t
know who she’d be without empathy.
She said when they removed the tube
it felt like a wet piece of spaghetti
coming out of her head.
She says that she’s lucky.
It’s been a good experience.
