Meat & Three

"In exchange, I talk about how they found it... and sometimes, the biopsy."

Meat & Three

After I let people know, 
offers for lunch rolled in;
free lunches may not exist,
but so far, I’m not paying;

in exchange, I talk about how they found it;
     catfish, please; 
and sometimes, the biopsy;
     cocktail sauce;
and of course, my prostate; 
hardly anyone knows anything about the prostate; 
I sure didn’t;
     macaroni and cheese;
and invariably, the effects surgery has on penile function; 
     collards, oh, and black-eyed peas;
and I might pepper the conversation 
with concerns about incontinence;
     cornbread, please; 
     just water with lemon;
but does that count as a cost?
     Yes; banana pudding, 
     thank you.

image c/o Matt Layne

Matt Layne writes…

Friday, July 26th was my 28th and final radiation treatment for prostate cancer. This was my second and hopefully final encounter with prostate cancer after first being diagnosed in early 2022 and treated with High Intensity Focalized Ultrasound in July 2022. 

Before they began my final radiation treatment, my oncology team asked what I was going to do to celebrate. I told them I was going to Vegas to see Dead & Company at the Sphere, and we chatted about the high cost of tickets and music and books as I lay back on the table. Books have been a major source of our conversation. Book banning, and I've done a good bit of librarianly reader's advisory on the radiation table. They're a well-read crew.

The radiation oncology team has a portable speaker they often play during treatment, and they flipped it on as they left the room. Bob Seger sang earnestly about those same night moves he's been working on since 1976, the ones where he's trying to make some front-page drive-in news, and the RapidArc radiation machine whirred to life to begin its satellite circle around me as the table shifted this way and that to get me into the proper position. As I watched the machine circle me, I thought, not for the first time, how similar its patina is to the sparkle-tone blue paint of my first bicycle. I called that bike Midnight Blue. I hadn't thought of that in decades. It ain't it funny how our minds move?

Each radiation treatment involves one full clockwise rotation and one full counterclockwise rotation of the radiation machine. The RapidArc radiation machine beeps the entire time it is beaming, so that beep began the machine began its first full laborious rotation around me. There is usually a pause between orbits, then some repositioning, but this pause was particularly pregnant, and then Bob Seger cut off in the middle of his remembering.

 My heart skipped a beat thinking there might be an issue. One treatment day, a member of the team came in and said, "Mr. Layne, you have a gas bubble that we need you to pass before we continue your treatment," She went on to ask if I'd like her to leave the room as I passed the gas bubble, and I've lived in fear of a gaseous repeat ever since, but no voice came over the speaker. Instead, the familiar chords of The Grateful Dead's Althea came piping over the little speaker, and the buzzer sounded, and that big blue machine that reminds me of my childhood bicycle, Midnight Blue, began its final orbit around my body, and this has been hard, y'all, and tears ran down either side of my cheeks and into my ears as I clutched a little blue foam oval over my heart, and I mainly want to remind you that people are mostly good and mostly kind, and it's awfully nice when we all look out for one another, and let's do more of that, and maybe take each other out to a free lunch someday real soon.

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Poet, librarian, raconteur Matt Layne has been poking hornet's nests and looking under rocks for lizards and snakes since he was knee-high to a peanut peg. A founding member of the 1990s improvisational poetry collective, The Kevorkian Skull poets, Layne believes in the radical transformative power found in the intersection of poetry and art, and he wants you to write your truth and share it out loud. A multiple Hackney Award winning writer, he has also been recognized by the National Society of Arts and Letters and been featured in Peek Magazine, Birmingham Arts Journal, Steel Toe Review, B-Metro, and elsewhere. Look for him at your local library.

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