Combatting Cancer with Kindness

Elaine Sorrentino

 

 
Elaine Sorrentino at Pink Lemonade presentation

By Elaine Sorrentino

 I was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2006 and again in October 2019.  I've started dreading the month of October.  I've written a number of poems to help me process what it's been like navigating cancer. Fellow breast cancer survivor/poet Dzvinia Orlowsky and I collaborated to create a program called Pink LemonAid which presents breast cancer-inspired art, mostly poetry and prose, but music as well.  It was ironic that two days after the first presentation of this program, I was diagnosed again.  October of 2026, we'll present our next Pink LemonAid.  Proceeds from books sold at the event will help women needing transportation to chemo.  We've both been there and have experienced kindness from the most surprising places.

These poems show my journey:


Who Doesn’t Love Positive?

They said
be more positive
you’ll be happier
you’ll live longer
you’ll have more friends
you’ll be more successful, confident
you’ll lower your risk of disease
you’ll age slower, more gracefully
you’ll reduce your chances of depression
you’ll inspire others to be more positive.
So, I embraced positive,
became the epitome of positive,
simply oozed positive¬−
as did my cancer biopsy,
my world altered forever by positive,
betraying me the moment
positive became something…different.
This new positive produced 
a scarred and dimpled gland
burnt, useless, wire-like veins
two different cup sizes
unwanted tattoos in intimate places
rejected “organ donor” status
blood now worthless to anyone.
Yet, beyond physical changes,
what made my upbeat heart weep
were glances tinged with unwelcome pity,
and yearly reminders that I could be positive again.


Searching for a Lifeboat 
            during treatment
 
I am the wonder ball
the hot potato 
the short straw
 
as desirable 
as a bruised apple
in a fruit basket,
 
no one volunteers to steer
the ship of my wellbeing,
instead, the medical crew
 
references paragraph three
where it says this is the least 
to which they're obligated;
 
no longer their concern
I am passed on to the next port,
island-hopping for health care.


Buzz off the Buzz Off

Put the razor down.
Ask yourself
Why am I doing this?
If your undertaking is for me,
don’t waste your time;
your gesture,
intended as supportive,
only serves to hurl
me into melancholy
You are my mirror,
my support, my rock,
and your follicle-free
scalp reminds me
of my grueling struggle.
Keep your full head
of hair, and remind me
instead, of my reward
at the end of my journey.
First published in The Writer's Newsletter, 


Alternate Hair
           
It didn’t matter who knew.
I wasn’t attempting to hide my truth.
 
This bouncy, brown, easy-to-wear mop
preserved my freedom to buy groceries
 
without cruel whispers
look at the lady in the cereal aisle

her dome’s smooth as honeydew in produce,
it allowed me it to cling to a smidgeon
 
of normalcy in a stretch
that felt like daily ransacking;
 
scalp enhancement staved off
pity, questioning stares; this patient
 
embraced dinner out with her sweetie,
tossed aside needles and scalpels
 
to step back into the world of the living,
savoring a moment of sweet vanity.

First published in Verse Virtual

 

Uninvited

Cancer comes knocking
once every thirteen years,
and I say no, thank you,
but it heaves itself
into my body anyway
refusing to leave
until I escort it to the exit,
thrust it into the dark,
and nail that door shut.
Don’t come scratching again.


Eye for an Eye
            post radiation
 
After I silently counted
the last “six Mississippi”
under the linear accelerator,
lowered my arms
and rolled off the table,
the technician tossed
a fistful of confetti in the air
and handed me a certificate
of completion.
 
In private that night
after unwrapping
that tender breast
itchy and inflamed,
soothing it with salve,
I folded the beige parchment
once, then once again,
knelt before the fireplace,
threw open the flue,
and struck a match.

First published on The Keeping Room, Minerva Rising


Two Views

cancer
maintenance
drugs
stole
my eyebrows,
thinned
my hair,
weakened
my bones
cancer
maintenance
drugs
lengthened
my life,
restored
my hope,
permitted
more time
to nag
my kids

 

Growing up in Sheffield, England

Lynn White

 
Lynn White as a child

By Lynn White

The first home I remember is the one described in 'Bath Time'. It was in Sheffield inner city, a stone's throw from the house my mother had grown up in and lived in until the death of her mother in 1941. The photo is taken opposite my home and you can clearly see the ringlets described in 'Sore Fingers'. Just before my 6th birthday when we moved to a Council House on the northern outskirts. This was to be my home until I left to go to college and my parents home until their deaths. It was a 10 minute walk from my auntie's where my mother had lived after the death of her mother. Opposite was the rough ground where 'Red Car' is located. Further down the wild area met the 'bottom road' which divides the houses from the countryside. Coming up the other side the street is lower and the wild area forms the 'cliffs' of 'Running Wild'. My school, till the age of 11, was 10 minutes in another direction. I would have been 8 when we had the Student Teacher described in 'Such Nonsense'. Another auntie lived in a village on the south side of Sheffield and the setting for ' School Shoes' is there.


Bath Time

The bath used to hang on the wall
in the scullery.
Not our scullery.
His scullery.
We borrowed it from Mr Neil
who rented us the rooms
at the front of his house.
One down, one up.
My mother would knock on his door
and he would lift it down for her.
But she had to carry it to our 
living room.
It was heavy,
made of zinc she said.
It took a lot of water
which had to be carried from the outside
tap and then heated on our gas ring.
It took a lot of hot water
and had to be filled 
and emptied
with a jug.
Sometimes it was just too much work
for her
and she washed me in a bowl
as I sat on her fat lap.
It was snuggly.
I preferred it 
that way
really.

First published in Visual Verse


Sore Fingers

At night my long hair was wrapped
in rags - pristine strips
of thick white cloth.
Sore fingers, my mother called them.
My unruly curls bandaged
into six stiff sore fingers,
to be unravelled in the morning
to reveal
shiny ringlets
ready
to be tied in bunches
with broad, bright, bias cut ribbons.

I wanted plaits.
All the heroines
in my childhood 
books had plaits
I dreamt about plaits
fantasised about plaits.
No more sore fingers.
I wanted plaits.

Sometimes I untied the ringlets,
to my mothers displeasure,
and made untidy, unsuccessful plaits.
Plaits would ruin my hair, my mother said.
Would spoil it’s natural curl,
destroy it
in some
way
never
specified.

I didn’t care.
I hated ringlets.
I hated sore fingers.
I wanted plaits.

First published in Silver Birch Press


Red Car

The abandoned car stood on the waste ground,
rusting away, doors hanging off, leather seats ripped.
The children played there on warm summer days
but I was not allowed.
The place was dangerous
and the children were rough.
It was the first time I had ever been in a car.
I sat behind the wheel to drive it making
engine noises like a bus.
It was a black car.
In those days all cars were black.
Any colour you like, so long as it’s black.
I thought that a red one would have been nicer.

First published in Blognostics


Running Wild

She had been one of my mothers best friends.
Her daughter was in my class at school
and one of my best friends.
But I was rarely allowed to call on her
to play out.

She lived in a street opposite ‘the cliffs’,
which when I’ve been there since,
weren’t cliffs at all,
just a steep area
overgrown
with bushes 
and small tees
with an overgrown field above.

It was great fun scrambling around there.
“Dangerous”, my mother said,
“and those children
are allowed
to run wild”!

But it was great fun while it lasted!

First published in Mocking Owl Roost


School Shoes

I loved the pond near my auntie’s.
Just a short walk from the village.
I could get right up close 
and peer into the water.
That was how I saw the frogs.

They were not easy to catch but
I managed it eventually, one at a time.
I kissed each carefully
to make sure they were real frogs,
didn’t want one of those prince things.

Then I put them in my shoe and placed
my other shoe on top
so that they couldn’t jump out.
I walked back barefoot 
over the rough ground
and the village street.

I discovered that my mother and auntie
were afraid of frogs.
Perhaps they would have preferred princes.
They didn’t like the barefoot walk either.
My dirty feet would show them up, 
they said.

And worse! They were my school shoes,
which were also my only shoes
and now they were smelly with pond water
and frogs!
But my uncle was cool
said they were good for the garden.
So I watched them leapfrog through his garden.

I hoped they’d be happy there.
He told me they were,
but I never saw them again.

First published in School Shoes, Four Feathers Press


Such Nonsense

We had a new teacher,
a student still in college.
He read us a long poem. 
I listened carefully trying
to make sense of it.
It was funny.
Was it meant to be funny?
or was the laughter of derision,
to what sounded like nonsense.
Laughter seemed allowed
and that was unusual.
School was not a place for fun.
Well, maybe it was nonsense
but I loved the imagery
and the colours of the words.
I asked if 'pea green' was
the colour of mushy peas
from the chip shop,
or was it those in pods
fresh from the garden.
Nothing was clear,
but it was fun.

First published in Medusa’s Kitchen 

Book of the Week

 Orinoco Plains (dancing girl press, 2025) by Lorraine Caputo

 

 
Comments By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

In Orinoco Plains, Lorraine Caputo, the traveling troubadour, takes
readers on a magical musical tour through the Llanos of Venezuela in this entertaining and exhilarating poetry collection.

About the book:

With her latest collection of travel poetry, Orinoco Plains, Lorraine Caputo invites you on a journey through the Llanos of Venezuela. This region, traversed by the mighty Orinoco River, teems with wildlife. Roseate spoonbills and black ibis, caimans and iguanas, anteaters and capybara are just some of the fauna we shall see. And we will witness the lives of the people of these plains, celebrating feast days, dancing, playing music, going to school, traveling – and those displaced from their ancestral homes. Come and enjoy the adventure!

About the author:

Wandering troubadour Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear internationally in over 500 journals and 24 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Santa Marta Ayres (Origami Poems Project, 2024). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. She is a Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honoree (2011), and multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. 

Some of my favorite poems:

LLANO VIGNETTES

I. 
Black-crested, golden-throated large bird sits on a fence post. 
Verdant pasture stretches to forest. 
White egrets stroll amidst white cattle grazing.

II.
Three men stand mid-river. 
Muddied waters hasten past muscular legs. 
The middle hombre reaches to cast a net.

III.
White sun shielded by humid clouds. The water-logged land 
is flat, flat to any horizon & dusted by white long-plumage flowers. 
A flock of garzas swoops over these llanos.

IV.
Three men ride atop a load of sugar cane. The truck-wind whips 
the dried blades & their shirts.

V.
Early afternoon, egrets fill the small-leaf trees edging a plowed field. 
The come-again rainy season swells reborn swamps of lavender-spiked 
flowers & lazy streams.

Perched atop un árbol, a hawk-sized bird, chestnut-colored body, 
cream-colored head.

VI.
The two-lane highway slices across the thick landscape of thick woods, 
thick pastures thick with zebu. Joropos play on the radio, we dance 
around potholes.Trees & lakes thick with waterfowl – herons, scarlet ibis, storks.

VII.
Ay, how can I describe the beauty of this land when I 
don’t know the names of the birds, the trees, the plants …?

VIII.
Beings quickly breach the dirty-mirror surface or duck beneath concentric 
circles forming. In one lakelet, a babo, snout in air, slowly swims
towards a white heron.

IX.
But I can recognize the trees of civilization: mango, palm, banana, flamboyán …
& in the mist is a duo, a trio of houses

X.
Every now & again, in some stretch of the middle of this nowhere, 
we come across a blue truck, a bus or yet another truck broken down.

XI.
Dragonflies dance in the now-mid-afternoon, across the road, around us. 
A breeze ripples the water & grasses. The countless lagunillas with a solitary 
or more babos. On one small island sun three, mouths open. 

& this llano soil, bone-white, blood-red, engraved by these herds of cattle, 
these flocks of birds & iguanas.



MANGO SUNSET

Mango sunset . . . . . full
moon arising high over
the llanos . . . . . balance
 
Mounting clouds veil la
Luna. The air vibrates with
the calls of toads &
cicada. Lightning pulses
profound indigo heavens.
 
Suddenly this world
stills. & then the breeze, stirring
the lance-shaped leaves of
those trees that tower like the
thunderheads. Heavy fruit sway.
 
& steadily the
rains slide throughout the night ‘til
pale mango sunrise.


SONATA FOR A LATE AFTERNOON

Narrow old-city streets lined with rainbow
houses. In the rooms of one, lilac-
colored, youth learn music. Boys tune their
guitars. A boy sits in the window
looking out  to the cobbled street. Chords
of cuatro, bars of French horn, sweet
voices drift through the sultry late day.

GLIMPSING YOUR LIVES

In this port town built by foreign mining companies, not too far from the US-ranch-style former housing of their executives, behind strip mall stores displaying hundreds of styles of shoes, the latest fashions & electronics.

I glimpse your lives
as we speed by

In that treeless lot several dozen indigenous families live in shelters made of sapling posts, perhaps with walls of cloth, plastic sacks, cardboard, with roofs of tied-down plastic sheeting billowing in the wind of deep-grey clouds, with hard-packed dirt floors, with several net hammocks hanging, children resting, women breastfeeding, with clotheslines, stacks of firewood between each home, dark-skinned chamos playing, dogs & cats roaming, a man scraping a pot clean before putting it on the cook fire.

I glimpse your lives...

Out on the medians of broad boulevards, 1970s cars, SUVs racing rapidly past, your young daughters, young mothers, your abuelitas walk, hands outstretched for a few bolívares, fresh-flowered dresses brightening the grey day, the black pavement, the greyed air, thick feet planted into the rust-blood earth.

...as we speed by

You were driven many years ago from your delta lands dried up by the rerouting of the Orinoco to open shipping channels—Ay, where else could you go, except here, homeport of those mineral companies?

I glimpse...

The wind grows harsher, scurrying garbage around the fenced-off lot next door, a flash of thin white lightning, sharp thunder as dusk arrives, your sons rushing home.

...your lives

& when these daily rains come...

...as we...

& when the night comes...

...speed by


SONG TO THE ORINOCO
    —multi-voice, sung chorus

Ever since I was a child I
have dreamed of mounting you &
sailing far away to the sea
on the slow-flowing waters

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

A muddy snake serpentining
almost fifteen-hundred miles
past high mountains, through dense jungles
& across the llano plains

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

I want to reach down & gather
your many bouldered islands
into a garland ‘round my neck
bronzéd by your humid sun

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

I want to drape myself with your
golden dry-season beaches
& with those verdant-fringed shores
of your many months of rain

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

We’ll watch caimans & piranhas,
the manatees swimming past
jaguars come to the water’s edge
& the birds flying o’erhead

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

Let us float the wide waters past
Caicara, through the narrows
of Angostura, down downstream
to dark River Caroní

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

Then into the many channels
lacing through fertile delta
lands until we reach the calm blue-
silver Caribbean Sea

Sail away
    Sail away
        Sail away

Ever since I was a child I
have dreamed of sailing with you
but the boats have long since ceased &
I will still have to dream of …

Sailing away
    Sailing away
        Sailing away

To Buy the Book:

https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/orinoco-plains-lorraine-caputo