Multiple Sclerosis

By Cynthia Huntington b. 1951 Cynthia Huntington

For ten years I would not say the name.

I said: episode. Said: setback, incident,

exacerbation—anything but be specific

in the way this is specific, not a theory

or description, but a diagnosis.

I said: muscle, weakness, numbness, fatigue.

I said vertigo, neuritis, lesion, spasm.

Remission. Progression. Recurrence. Deficit.

But the name, the ugly sound of it, I refused.

There are two words. The last one means: scarring.

It means what grows hard, and cannot be repaired.

The first one means: repeating, or myriad,

consisting of many parts, increasing in number,

happening over and over, without end.

Source: The Radiant (Four Way Books, 2003)

Biography

Cynthia Huntington was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She earned a BA at Michigan State University and an MA from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

Huntington’s free verse poems often examine the bare mind, restlessly turning the form of the individual against both built and natural environments, mapping both threat and respite against a shifting screen of personal memory. Introducing her early work in . . .

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