I. But I want a brilliant career as a poet. II. May, 1995: I get a brilliant career in psychotherapy. I’m also put on Zoloft. (The playing field is temporarily leveled.) III. May, 1996: I have my first seizure. I’m taken off Zoloft, put on Clonapin, then Neurontin, then med, med, med ad nauseam. I …
I enter a psych ward, one of the ones I’m so good at staying out of these days and cross the red line. The walls are yellow, like old cellophane, and the floor tiles are gray as dull nail heads. The air smells of old tears, tears that have scabbed over. I walk into the …
I am cooking, cutting potatoes for kale soup as my little family loves kale soup. I am cutting potatoes for kale soup, the peels slick, wet autumn leaves, their meat white as cornstarch when, suddenly, the knife flies out of my hand. It flies out of my hand while a strange wizardry fires up my …
I begin with a sentence: “And the mist has salt in it that burns as it heals, burns as it heals.” This sentence has circled and circled in the aviary of my brain for days on end, will wing its way into a poem. I live on the water, the water lives in me, swamping …
In me is a howler, screeching, half-mad, possessed. Her screams are lightning bolts exploding in my spine. She is shrieking louder than a cacophony of crows, very black rapacious crows. Still young, she wants to kill me, bludgeon me with a meat hammer, pound flesh till it thins, spurts blood which spatters my walls. A …
In the morning, my father makes runny, scrambled eggs, limp bacon. His eyes are bloodshot as he stares at my mother as she eats her half of a banana, her standard breakfast. I want to play musical spoons, or telephone, but just what message would I broadcast? Love me like there’s no tomorrow? Love me …
“Bedtime girls,” says my father who is tall, lean, elegant and ugly, a stranger to my heart. Because I am a dutiful daughter, I have already taken on the vocation of devotion, want to light votive candles for both my parents, there on the breakfast bar where the liquor bottles glint like idols. “Yes, I’m …
I waltz over to the black upright piano, the one I played while singing to my mother so she could nap. She never thanked me, but that I could deliver her onto the peace of sleep was the gift God gave me to give to her. I touch the keys, start to sing, “Silent Night” …