Henrietta Lacks, Like Rose Red Poem by Anne Higgins

Henrietta Lacks, like Rose Red,
kept her nails short, but painted them crimson.
Toes, too, so that even at the autopsy,
the assistant saw the chipped red on the dead toes
and knew this was a woman who loved beauty and color,
who loved Clover, Virginia and its fragrant foliage,
who loved to cook spaghetti for her hungry cousins,
who loved to go dancing.

From what furnace of hell did that cancer come,
that viscous vicious virulent voracious purple grape
called Adenocarcinoma?
Was it radiated by her husband's philandering
returned
before the Hopkins radium tried to kill it?

Pearls of it studded her insides
by the time it blocked her bladder
and poisoned her with her own fluids.