Chemo Brain   “Chemo brain has given me a new leaf on lice,” you said, and who was I to disagree, deconstruct, downplay, or dismiss? I wrote it down — you insisted. Of grief, you said little. Better, you thought, to turn it all around and laugh about the port, issue dispatches from the front lines roaring in your head like ice so dry it burns, you said, or full of chunky peanut butter with oil being stirred back in, or full of batting, and bats. The tide and the pull of the moon, rising — why can’t they just cut it out? When you said, “Chemotherapy’s made me smarter,” I didn’t disagree.                                                        for Marti     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont June 2016