Jeff Tigchelaar | Prayed on at the Y

Prayed on at the Y. Poems by Jeff Tigchelaar, selected by Ron Mohring as Number Three in Volume Ten of our Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.

Release date:  August 19, 2022 [49 copies]
25 pages
$9.00 S O L D O U T

Cover: vintage quilting cotton, ca. 1945. 

Jeff Tigchelaar is the author of the collection Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour (Woodley Press, 2015), winner of the Kansas Authors Club Nelson Poetry Book Award. His poems appear in AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal (as runner-up for the Adrienne Rich Prize), Harpur Palate, Pleiades, Rattle, Rhino, The MacGuffin, and North American Review, as well as in Best New Poets, New Poetry from the Midwest, and Verse Daily. Recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, he lives in Huntington, West Virginia, with his daughter, Charlotte, his son, Sam, and his wife, Jana.

The Breast Cancer Center Hug Lady

Edwards Comprehensive Cancer Center, Huntington, West Virginia

Oh my God I’m a miracle that’s what
you need to keep saying to yourself because
you are, look at you
with your little
beautiful-shaped head look at that just perfect your
mom did it right she must have really
carried you around not left you lying and I see your
husband is taking some very good notes there that’s all right
keep that up Bub and save ’em and look
back on it when this is all
well and it’s
a treasure and don’t forget, put your emotions in there too. Now
sweetie have you been using your coloring book? We also
have a Survivor Dinner come October and a walk, Colors
for Cancer, you ought to go. Bring him too. The only thing
you really need right now though, with that little sweet-
round head of yours, is some big earrings, hoopy ones.
Now typically I hand out—and I do this with everybody—
this little brochure for the American Cancer Society’s
preferred wig shop but you can sure take it or leave it. All right
I do have to go visit with some of the other patients—
survivors!—all my brave and beautiful . . .
but before I do I think you know what
has to come first. I didn’t get
my title for nothing.
It’s on the name tag, see?
Come on, come here. There
we go.

  • Limited edition: only 24 copies are available.
  • Update: this chapbook has sold out. Thank you for supporting this poet!