‘For the Suggestion Box’, ‘Undressing’ & ‘In a Whirlwind’
Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art
For the Suggestion Box
Detection should be simpler.
I propose a collaboration
between canaries and breasts
where they reside in symbiosis.
Those yellow birds nesting
among the ribs
beneath the breasts
coexisting in their dwelling
living together in peace
provided the cells remain
free of radicals and lumps
each gambling on the other
Once the first rabid cell attempts division,
the canaries simply fly out screeching an alarm.
Undressing
During gym class when I attended the fifth grade, some unknown person started stealing jewelry from first one girl and then another. My old maid teacher took it upon herself to conduct strip searches to find the missing baubles. Thank goodness, she never asked me to strip. When mothers of traumatized girls rioted in the principal’s office, they demanded that the teacher be stopped. She stopped. But not before she damaged those girls--their confidences shattered, their bodies laid vulnerable, their privacy violated, their protests ignored. They refused to go back to school as long as that old witch was permitted to view their newly budding figures. Mary Alice said, Oh, Peggy! It was horrible. You are lucky she didn’t single you out too. I boasted overconfidently, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have walked straight to the principal’s office and called my Mama. Mama was fifteen years dead when the home healthcare aid came into my home to help me bathe for the first time after my mastectomy. She showed extreme kindness, asking, Am I doing this the way you like it. Careful not to accidentally tug the drain tube out of my chest wall, gentle when she wrapped the compression bandage around my upper torso. Still, the first time I took off my clothes in front of her, a stranger, I swallowed hard, thought about those poor fifth grade girls and understood infinitely how they felt back then. I closed my eyes and allowed her to undress me.
In a Whirlwind
I step out of this body of mine
for a second, a minute, maybe longer.
I repudiate failures, complaints, surgeries.
I stride into a dervish seeking a truth
I’m longing to find, and name to hold
onto like a small kitten snuggled
to my chest just to hear her purr.
I listen for piano notes the color of lemon
meringue, pomegranate and turquoise
to take me to a place beyond
the limitations of imagination.
Trinkets of time clink and tinkle
together to contrive an illusion
of permanence. We embrace
the beguiling belief
that we control things,
when the truth is we control—Nothing.
Still, I am human.
When pieces of my body
fall away, I cry out
like a wounded Mama cat.
Now, I close my eyes to the present,
peer into the future
where I become nothing but white light.
Peggy Heitmann received honorable mention in the 2025 Ron Rash Awards. She is an award-winning poet who received a 2024 pushcart nomination from Gyroscope Review. She has published poems in Wild Word Poetry, Atlanta Review and Pine Song. She considers herself both word and visual artist. Peggy lives in Raleigh, NC with her husband and two cats.
