To the Doctor Giving Her a “Handful of Months”
I go to poetry for answers, revelation—
it brings me comfort, possibility, and form.
But this time it’s assumptive, cryptic, thief,
villanelle turned villain, and metaphor
a whore. I’m looking for precision
not analogy— so if you don’t know, say
you don’t, don’t placate, pander, pimp.
Your tap dance out in shapeshifting
and shadow feels more a taunt or dare, dice
cast to chance. I recognize the urge
to make things last, dilute and soften blows
with ambiguity, but this sleight of hand
is maddening, slippery in my grasp—
as if the sonnet’s turned, betraying me.
Writer, artist, and educator, Kelly Cass Falzone, earned her MFA in Poetry from Spalding University in Louisville, KY, and MSEd. in Counselor Education from SUNY Brockport. Her work appears in journals such as Good River Review, Stone Canoe, Literary Accents, Nashville Arts Magazine, Clackamas Literary Review, and The Journal of Poetry Therapy, and has been awarded recognition from the Bea Gonzales Prize for Poetry, Porch Prize in Poetry, Libba Moore Gray Prize in Poetry, Berry College Emerging Southern Women Writers Competition, Chattanooga Writer’s Guild, and Tennessee Writer’s Alliance. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.