A Picture of Health: Jo Spence, a Politics of Disability and Illness

In a twelve-poem sequence called simply “The Mastectomy Poems,” Alicia Ostriker takes the reader on a journey from the shock of breast cancer diagnosis through surgery and the challenges of recovery—physical and emotional. Ostriker begins by acknowledging a common denial of vulnerability: “You never think it will happen to you,/What happens every day to other women.” A later poem parallels the approach that Spence and many other disabled activists and artists have embraced: “Spare me your pity,/Your terror, your condolence./I’m not your wasting heroine.” Toward the close of the sequence, the poem below, “Healing,” is a complex portrait of mourning and resilience. From an ice-like fear, the release of a “howl” of rage and grief promises later healing, a potential warming in the “less than zero” weather of the soul.

9. Healing

Brilliant—
A day that is less than zero
Icicles fat as legs of deer
Hang in a row from the porch roof
A hand without a mitten
Grabs and breaks one off—
A brandished javelin
Made of sheer
Stolen light
To which the palm sticks
As the shock of cold
Instantly shoots through the arm
To the heart—
I need a language like that,
A recognizable enemy, a clarity—
I do my exercises faithfully,
My other arm lifts,
I apply vitamin E,
White udder cream
To the howl
I make vow after vow.

Alicia Ostriker, from “The Mastectomy Poems.” Reprinted by permission of the author. University Pittsburgh Press. The Crack in Everything. 1996.