Incongruity

The chemo floor is laid out
In patterns meant to assure
Blue white blue blue white
Squares of a checkerboard

In this box of a building
They put lines into me
Running down straight poles
From rectangular bags

Into how many squares
Have I entered with hope
Watching white coats
Ponder slides and charts

All this to battle a world
Of the round and oblong
Spherical planets and tumors
Evading angular control

Émigré

The year breaks against the dilapidated jetty
Not so much new as alien and indecipherable
The saccharine certainties of Auld Lang Syne
A useless tool for navigating this strange planet
Obscured by snow, recession, and disease

In a matter of weeks we can look forward
To the soaring oratory of hope
The audacity found in looking skyward
Rather than to the ravaged landscape
Into which we expect to plant seeds

Is it anxiety or bravery that fixes our eyes
Steadily on the grim metrics of the now
The relentless chop of expectations dashed
Of assumptions held like a mogul's privileges
Of savings accounts and red blood cell counts

We exhale from the collective delusion
That sustained us through the false years
Of presumed safety and accomplishment
Nothing for it but to endure as an émigré
Learning the new language as we go.