Sometimes I feel like Vincent van Gogh

 
Sometimes I feel like Vincent Van Gogh
Not because I sliced off my ear 
Nor are my creations so loved 

Sometimes I feel like Vincent van Gogh 
Because a brushstroke is the best I can turn to  
When the world is a spiral-shelled snail 
And the skies are all the wrong color 

Sometimes I feel like Vincent van Gogh 
Because this illness runs in my blood 

Sometimes I feel like Vincent Van Gogh 
Because I feel that if I go off on my own in the yellow-grass fields 
I'll never return again 







 

Wheels shriek and scrape at the laminated floors 
Long and white and deep underground
                    
As in the bowels of a great beast
Indeed, no one tells you this, but
The beast will swallow you whole, your life and your comfort, and spit you out fresh and stupid like an infant
The wheels squeak on the laminated floor
You think you would be scared 
But the clouds over your eyes make you smile
                    
Good evening, you say to the security guard
He knows not who you are, where you came from, or where you are going, but he sees the bile of the beast shimmering on your skin
In the plastic light
                    
The elevator doors roar open, and into the metallic chamber you are rolled
And abruptly you find yourself in the arteries, the sickening pathways from the heart to the stomach
You can hear the violent heartbeat of the beast as the elevator rises and rises 
Thundering and clanging metallically
It takes you in
                    
By the time you reach your stop, the acid has sunken into your skin
Stinging and eroding
All those hard layers of courage you cultivated
Peeling them like enamel shells from your weak form
Just as they peeled your clothes and your pride from you
                
As you enter, you feel as if you are entering an alternate realm 
Where you are not you, and you belong with the hoard with their eyes glued to the TV screen 

The bile has shrunken you, it has drained the blood from your skin
It will reach your brain soon 
Where the chemicals are already all screwy
Or so they have been telling you
                    
What is the harm now, I say 


 







A boy there kept sidling up and chatting with me 

Apparently it is not enough to say just no 

To be like this is to have a thumb pressed on the apple of my throat 

 



 


 

  

When I was wheeled in to the day room, the first thing that caught my eye
Was that big plastic bin 
Packed with bruised bananas and wrapper sweets that shone in the plastic light 
Like little diamonds in the rough of the trash and the ripped paper plates and the spilled Pringles 
And a package of Oreos with the top torn and shredded like it’s been violated 
Comparing wounds with the sugary green Sprite bottles squeezed so they look like corseted fashion models at the waist 
The occasional bulimic Coca Cola joins their mix, 
fizzing and foaming at the mouth 
Just like those girls they will pop, 
eventually  

Before we are ordered to our beds, I make my move 
And snatch several snacks to devour when the lights are all out 
Sugar and salt and something like strawberry jam touches my tongue 
Until only one goody is spared 

I know that when I finally take that bite, I will taste the brittleness and the confectioner’s sugar
And when the wrapper is empty, there is only me 
And the dark room, and the luminous ghost of the hallway light 
And the footsteps, 
And the truth of my gluttony 

And so I take that final treat 
I hide it beside my bed 
Draw up the sheets, knowing I’m happy it’s there 
Because in this little realm of temptation, I can control me 
Even as the world spins and sinks below my feet 

Day after day it will wait for me 
Like Persephone’s fateful pomegranate 
I will not take the bite, I swear, and as long as I do not I am free 

My little oatmeal cookie 



 

 

Boiled hen 

I am alone, turning the pages of a thick book on my desk made of stacked newspaper
and a child-sized night stand 
The dying sun seeps through the plated cracks of the cross-crossed and wired chicken coop fencing on the windows 

Then a knock on the door 
Which I find quite silly 
Considering that all the doors of this place are perpetually open or waiting to be opened
By gloved pediatric hands seeking minds and flesh to rend 

And there a figure stands 
“It is time for a shower” she speaks 
And says something vaguely like my name
Twisted so the syllables flick up with the movement of the tongue and make a shrill noise like they’re pushing against teeth 
She holds in her hands linens and sterile blue sheets 

But I don’t want to shower, I say 
I am clean 
“It’s time to shower” she says again 
It’s not a choice it seems 

I feel eyes on me as I push down a bra strap and a spandex seam 
All I see is my burning red feet on the deep gray tile 
The water guzzles and chokes the drain 
I feel I am choking 
I feel myself making small talk 
Laughing about my redness as I shiver like a fattened, plucked fowl 

“Don’t forget to wash everywhere” I am told by the watchful pair of eyes 
I catch a glimpse of a white thing in the mirror 
Horribly female, horribly flushed 
The water is too hot, I fear I’m being cooked

I now understand why such a bird would see the guillotine of the slaughter house 
Watching the blade make a dear sister or brother’s head fling 
And find that it is not such a bad thing to die 

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