Lobular
Sheila Black | Poetry, Summer 2026
Little nodes sprouting together to form
a head, a chrysanthemum, only bloodied slightly
at the edges. Inside. To feel a terror
of birds flying through—or is it that I feel myself
falling through air. How long do you plan to be here?
How long do you plan to stay? The letters I send
grow more loving and distant. The time we ate
almond paste pounded with sugar, smoothed
over with royal icing. Each shape an ovoid petal,
a prayer, a lozenge. Taste flooding, then dissipating,
Impossible to hold fully in the mind. A valley
seen from a train climbing a jagged mountain,
the lives you pictured living. When I said to you
we would walk through the fields of sunflowers,
and I did not know I was lying. In the office, they ask,
“Note down your preferred emergency contact.”
I did not know I was dying. What could be purer
than its desire to grow, multiply? The lobes
wheel off around the hard center—they send
their kiss-like tendrils deep into the bone. I am
listening for the birds that will spring to life. I
am watching for the fields to be bedazzled overnight,
the sunflowers turning as they follow the sun, each
petal, each lobe of an ear, each part breathing
its small part.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“I recently had a health scare – a tumor that turned out to be benign, but still a tumor – a collection of blood vessels, and I was struck by the pictures on the ultasounds – I had not known the word “lobular,” nor ever fully understood how flower-like, how much like a growing shoot or bud, a tumor might appear. Strange to think what grows in us! This poem—about, of course, the unsettledness of mortality—mourning, grief-- is also a grappling with that simple notion: We are not one thing, but an organic conglomeration, the borders are frangible, and this is as true of thoughts or memories as it is of our actual bodies—it is how those we love enter us.”
Sheila Black is the author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her most recent collection is Cinnamon Fire (Next Page Press, 202f). She is a co-editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Honors include a 2026 Creative West Fellowship. Poems and essays have appeared in Blackbird, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Tempe, AZ where she is assistant director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU).
Lobular
Sheila Black | Poetry, Summer 2026
Little nodes sprouting together to form
a head, a chrysanthemum, only bloodied slightly
at the edges. Inside. To feel a terror
of birds flying through—or is it that I feel myself
falling through air. How long do you plan to be here?
How long do you plan to stay? The letters I send
grow more loving and distant. The time we ate
almond paste pounded with sugar, smoothed
over with royal icing. Each shape an ovoid petal,
a prayer, a lozenge. Taste flooding, then dissipating,
Impossible to hold fully in the mind. A valley
seen from a train climbing a jagged mountain,
the lives you pictured living. When I said to you
we would walk through the fields of sunflowers,
and I did not know I was lying. In the office, they ask,
“Note down your preferred emergency contact.”
I did not know I was dying. What could be purer
than its desire to grow, multiply? The lobes
wheel off around the hard center—they send
their kiss-like tendrils deep into the bone. I am
listening for the birds that will spring to life. I
am watching for the fields to be bedazzled overnight,
the sunflowers turning as they follow the sun, each
petal, each lobe of an ear, each part breathing
its small part.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“I recently had a health scare – a tumor that turned out to be benign, but still a tumor – a collection of blood vessels, and I was struck by the pictures on the ultasounds – I had not known the word “lobular,” nor ever fully understood how flower-like, how much like a growing shoot or bud, a tumor might appear. Strange to think what grows in us! This poem—about, of course, the unsettledness of mortality—mourning, grief-- is also a grappling with that simple notion: We are not one thing, but an organic conglomeration, the borders are frangible, and this is as true of thoughts or memories as it is of our actual bodies—it is how those we love enter us.”
Sheila Black is the author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her most recent collection is Cinnamon Fire (Next Page Press, 202f). She is a co-editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Honors include a 2026 Creative West Fellowship. Poems and essays have appeared in Blackbird, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives in Tempe, AZ where she is assistant director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU).