"I Carry a Wor{l}d Inside Me" by Felicia Zamora
- 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
Dublin Core
- 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.
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Citation
Zamora, Felicia, “"I Carry a Wor{l}d Inside Me" by Felicia Zamora,” Excavating Histories: Archival Research Methods, accessed April 25, 2026, https://archive.engl.sites.carleton.edu/items/show/22.