Title: Cancer Courts My Mother
Author:
Publisher: Prolific Pulse Press LLC
Genre: Contemporary Poetry, Death, Grief, and Loss Poetry
Published: November 7, 2025
Pages: 40 pages
We live in a society with a rule we’re never taught, but somehow already know: you do not speak ill of your mother. Mothers are indeed sacred, but in this language, the rule is that mothers are beyond critique, beyond blame, untouchable. It means you are never to speak badly of them. Ever. Not in public. Not even to yourself. It’s not carved in stone or written on any wall, yet it hovers among us silent, expectant, immovable. Cancer Courts My Mother defies that silence.
These poems and stories peel back the polite mask to reveal the complicated, aching truth of loving a mother who has not always loved you well—and then being asked to care for the very person who once caused the hurt. It is bravery set to verse, honesty without apology, and the painful dance between resentment and devotion when illness becomes the final judge.
“Bad memories are cadavers that refuse burial. Instead of an archive of velveteen nostalgia, her name leaves gravel in my mouth.”
The title suggests that cancer is courting the mother, but more deeply, the illness is also courting the daughter who tells this story. In this piece, LoSchiavo is not only the narrator; she is the wounded child. As she tends to a woman who once sharpened every word into a blade, she is confronted with a new version of her mother: frail, softened by illness, gentled by morphine.
“Cancer helped adorn my mother with patience, her acidic breath pausing to accept the spoon that brought breakfast.”
The disease becomes an unwanted chaperone, pulling the daughter into an intimate dance between what was and what is—between the sting of old wounds and the strange tenderness of caring for the very person who caused them.
In the piece “Flash,” the author reveals how her breached birth changed everything.
“To hear my mother tell it, a respectful infant should politely slide from the womb.”
I felt sympathy for the daughter because one cannot control how they enter the world, and she articulates this with a raw truth in the lines, “eventually, I became a vegetarian, refusing to eat anything that had a mother.”
These kinds of powerful lines are all throughout the book, and you’ll want to sit wth them. While the book is a short, quick read, you wouldn’t want to rush through it. The words deserve to be savored for their deeper meaning.
While holding space for the daughter, I also felt empathy for the mother. I know from the testimony of family and friends that motherhood is no fairytale. I understand how a mother can lose herself to the point of resentment. I enjoyed balancing these two thoughts, and I love that the author gave me this opportunity.
As the Grim Reaper inches closer to claiming his prize, we can see how, despite the daughter’s feelings toward her mom, it is not without deep love, proving society wrong: We can tell the truth about mothers while loving them.
As KE Garland writes: “There are kind ways to characterize those we love, without denigrating them.”
The way this book is written conveyed the truth without judgment.
“When my mother died, she took home along with her.”
As someone who has also lost her mom to multiple illnesses, I sympathize with that powerful line, and it reminds me of a line from Nayyirah Waheed, who says, “My mother was my first country. the first place i ever lived.”
(The non-capitalization in Waheed’s lines is intentional.)
My only wish is to see this as a whole book, maybe a memoir, so we can have the entire experience. The poetry and the prose, the haikus, are all excellent, but it’s such a good story that I wanted to read some of it raw and without poetic decoration.
Ratings
- Structure and Form: 4/5
- Originality/Authentic Voice: 4/5
- Creativity/Lyrical Content: 5/5
- Thought Provoking: 5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
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