Cancer Patient’s Poetry Put It in Perspective

Lizbeth Parker will be featured at a poetry reading Sunday, and the dozen poems she will recite all deal with the cancer that forced her to have a mastectomy.

“To have to go through the experiences I did and have no way to express them would have been agonizing,” said the Cypress woman, a divorced mother of two. “Writing them down was a relief for me, a way of putting everything in perspective.”

The reading will include this excerpt from her poem “More, for the Loss”:

I want to believe I am more

for this decision. More mother,

daughter, sister, friend,

and lover. More Person.

There is no counting

backwards from one hundred,

only silent screaming--

Don’t cut. Don’t cut.”

A film based on another poem about cancer, titled “I Tell Myself,” will be shown during the reading.

But while Parker’s subject matter is serious, there will be light moments, said the Cypress College computer graphics instructor, who holds a bachelor’s degree in English from UC Irvine and a master’s in English from Cal State Long Beach.

“I like to talk about the funny things that happened along the way,” said Parker, 41, who wrote her first poem as a fourth grader. “Cancer is a struggle, but life is still going on and funny things still happen to you. Some of the poems will talk about that.”

Her reaction after learning about the breast cancer “was an absolute opposite than what I thought it would be and how I would act,” Parker said. “I just thought (the cancer) was rotten and I had to get rid of it.”

In fact, she added, “cancer scares people. It’s harder for the ones sitting on the sidelines than the one who has it. I learned that cancer doesn’t mean dying.”

Parker is sure her cancer is gone.

“My doctor said it is gone, but he wants to wait a total of five years to make sure,” she said.

It was family and friends who helped her through those critical first days after learning she had cancer.

“There was not a moment that I didn’t have emotional support,” said Parker, who started writing poems seriously in 1976 and has since been published in a number of magazines.

Later this year her fight against breast cancer will be published in book form.

It will contain poetry as well as personal anecdotes and observances.

Besides poetry, Parker is busy creating computer art that is gaining a measure of popularity with a number of clients. “As a single mother it helps pay the bills,” she said.

As an adjunct, Parker is attempting to develop a series of computer portrait videos to send to cancer support groups with the hope she will be asked to read poetry to the groups.

She has a computer self-portrait hanging in her living room.

While she enjoys computer artwork, “writing poetry is the biggest high in the world for me,” she said.

Parker will give her reading at 2 p.m. in the Marina Pacifica Condominium Clubhouse, 6201 E. 2nd St., Long Beach.

It will coincide with publication of the Long Beach-based Peal Poetry Magazine, in which she is the featured subject this month. The reading is free to the public.