"I Carry a Wor{l}d Inside Me" by Felicia Zamora

Dublin Core

Title

"I Carry a Wor{l}d Inside Me" by Felicia Zamora

Subject

Poetry, Felicia Zamora, Breast Cancer

Description

Poem by Felicia Zamora that addresses topics of the body and its systems, language, and the archive. Includes an image of a mammogram as part of the poem.

Creator

Zamora, Felicia

Source

Poetry (July/August 2024)

Publisher

Poetry Foundation

Date

July 2024

Rights

© 2025 Poetry Foundation

Relation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/162842/i-carry-a-world-inside-me#tab-author

Text Item Type Metadata

Text

I Carry a Wor{l}d Inside Me
By Felicia Zamora

Where wor{l}d & the tangible object of that wor{l}d collide. My brain thinks traces & again, Singh’s words at the back of my throat, The unconscious is the most evasive archive of all, yet is pulsing right there inside you. How the brain talks through & within epithelial barriers. Porous borders. How the brain chatters. Yet in the world of synapses, even the brain may not know-know. Language an archive. Flesh an archive. A felt presence. When what you feel supersedes the imaging. The mammogram cleared. & so. & so. What we keep hungry in the dark. What keeps. How much depends on a cell. Cell. I carry a wor{l}d inside me. What wraps tightly amongst the organs. Cells that do not mature, forgo the process of differentiation to reproduce, reproduce, reproduce. A silent stalking. I carry a wor{l}d inside me. A wor{l}d unimpressed with naming, with its own name. & this name; this name. I speak this wor{l}d so often, my tongue tastes of dandelion sap. Let me say tissues. Four types of tissues reside in the human body: connective, epithelial, muscle, & nervous. Connective tissues bind & support by holding together blood, bone & lymphatic tissues. How the epithelial covers—the skin & the linings of various passages become noticeable, heightened. Tender {e}motions, veins, muscles of me. To deconstruct. Inside the wor{l}d lives other wor{l}ds. Clever brain, always making games. To deconstruct tissues: tis-tis, uses, us, sits, is, sues, issues. Ah, there, issues. Issues. Issues. Deeper still: revolt, sickening, gorge-gorge, invasive. Deeper still: relinquish, nipple-tugged-down, ten-centimeter incision, harvest, ghost of a breast, neuropathy, echoing empty lymph nodes space, carcinoma. Deeper still, until gutturals, until no archive left to h{a}unt.

Image of an ultrasound

Notes: This poem contains a quote from Julietta Singh’s “The Ghost Archive,” from No Archive Will Restore You (punctum books, 2018).

Original Format

Poem. Original formatting can be seen on the Poetry Foundation website.