Under Glass by Mary F. Lachman

One’s contract with the body offers no guarantees, but rather a frontier of unknowns: “your future / hangs in the air / like a coin / tossed,” writes Mary Lachman in her autobiographic chapbook Under Glass. Without romanticizing the patient’s journey, Lachman illuminates the “little pieces” of her survival as seen through the lens of the poet and pathologist’s eye. Her deeply felt dispatches are etched into clear specimens of candor and grace, each poem beckoning us to pause and listen, to hold space, to breathe with her. Under Glass is as much a testimony of human resilience as it is an invitation to walk the path of radical empathy.

–Monica Ong, author of Silent Anatomies

A pathologist examines a slide. The client’s breast biopsy turns out to be normal. What a relief that will be for her!  But the pathologist herself is not so lucky. In her compelling collection of poems, Under Glass, Mary Lachman writes of her own journey through cancer. Using simple, straight-forward language, she details her challenging journey through fears, uncertainties, and unavoidable changes. People who have suffered from cancer or who are close to a cancer patient will know they not alone when they read Lachman’s honest and heart-felt poems.

–Ginny Lowe Connors, author of Toward the Hanging Tree