Author’s Note: Since early 2023, my greatest concern hasn’t been finding the perfect word, brilliant line break, or moving image for the poem that I was currently writing. My focus has involved my cancer diagnosis. Even now, I’m in the midst of the third treatment for this disease. While lying down during radiation treatment, I took mental notes of the details of the radiation table and space, the technicians’ conversations, and most importantly, my thoughts and emotions. I folded all of that into my desire to write a ghazal, a poetic form I’d previously not tried, and this is the poem that was created.
A Ghazal for Radiation Therapy
Le Hinton
A man lies on his back on the Varian True Beam One.
The technicians call it Jurassic Park because it’s the oldest one.
He’s not afraid of the radiation, a shortened life,
or the noduled cells that live inside this old one.
Music plays. A soundtrack. A metastasis. “All Right Now” by Free.
“What a Fool Believes.” It reached Number One.
There’s a painted window in the ceiling above with a tropical scene. Palm trees.
Blue sky. Even bluer water. He thinks of martinis made with Ketel One.
He knows this is only the first treatment as Cyndi Lauper sings “Time
after Time.” Iz’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is the one
version that suits the mood. The warmth of a Hawaiian sun
on the vacation he never took, the vacation not shared with his One.
Le Hinton is the author of seven poetry collections including, most recently, Elegies for an Empire (Iris G. Press, 2023). His work has been widely published and can be found in Pleiades, The Best American Poetry 2014, The Progressive, The Baltimore Review, Little Patuxent Review, and outside Penn Medicine Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.