POETRY MONDAY: May 4, 2009
The absence of a photo this month is intentional, because our featured poet prefers to remain gender-neutral. donnarkevic is the pen-name of a poet who was born in 1954, grew up in a small steel-town in Pennsylvania, and has lived for the last 28 years in West Virginia, working currently as a correctional counselor. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a parochial school background, donnarkevic also earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2008 from National University.
The following dramatic monologues are based, the poet tells us, on actual case studies to which fictional identities have been assigned. I hope you will find the channeled voices of these speakers as remarkable and disturbing as I did. Perhaps, since this is your field, you won’t. At any rate, we would welcome your comments.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
HEREDITARY PREDISPOSITION
W. Va. Hospital for the Insane
Name: Zella Kerns
Admitted: 11 October, 1887
Dad keeps two books on his office desk,
the Bible and Spinoza’s Ethics.
Pressed between the two,
a stack of suicide notes, collected
over thirty years as coroner.
One day, in my youth, I read the notes:
Case #1857-016
Martha,
I can no longer hide our destitution.
In the bank panic, I lost everything
of value I wanted
to bequeath the children:
cattle, horses, carriages,
the gristmill, acreage
by the lake where I taught them
to swim, to keep their heads
above water.
Creditors will demand an accounting,
will find the inventory short
two 50 lb. sacks of grain,
for the weight,
to prevent faintheartedness.
If they squawk,
tell them to go jump in the lake!
Case #1860-009
You snake!
Through my veins, the poison
of your adulterous lies radiates,
paralyzes my heart.
But never too late to let blood.
Your straight razor will do,
will glide like a violin bow
across my wrists,
the final note, B-flat minor,
the feeling I get
when I am all alone.
Case #1866-031
Father,
Cob jobs! Sloppy work!
Not ever level enough.
My carpentry always suspect.
You crucified me to your trade,
me, a splinter in your finger
you never could extract.
As you perch at your county fair
blue-ribbon-perfect dinner table,
the dust of saws, planes, and bores
falling from your beard, flecking
your pumpernickel and hogget
like bitter herbs, chew on this:
when you cut me down,
sever the limb as well.
Build me a box. Strike the dowels
with a dead-blow mallet
to minimize damage to
the soft yielding flesh
of your precious pinewood.
And make it level enough
to keep these bones
from rattlin’.
One note in particular,
the handwriting familiar:
the bellies of the p’s and b’s exposed;
the legs of the f’s, g’s, and y’s dangling
like downed telegraph wires;
the necks of h’s, k’s, and l’s,
thin, eyeless needles.
The woman doesn’t explain, expresses sorrow
for the pain, if any, caused her husband,
for leaving a daughter, too young
to understand, the note
ending, long before the page bottoms out
into a blemish of ink from a leaky nib,
the name, Adele, drowned.
§
Yesterday, Dad visits, brings the Bible
and Ethics. I choose Spinoza.
Suicide can never be a rational choice,
he reads, stressing key words as if I am deaf,
but always results from being overcome
by external causes.
The dear man will want to understand
my last testament. Perhaps he will
comfort himself with Proverbs:
Each heart knows its own joy,
and no one else can share its bitterness.
Perhaps he will marry my note with mother’s.
Perhaps he will burn them all in the fireplace
and warm himself in the mystery,
like a good book.
When they think I am out of danger,
they let me roam the asylum,
so while the light lingers,
I search the grounds for an accessible limb,
one stronger than I,
beyond the reach of memory
or meaning.
LOSS OF LEG
W. Va. Hospital for the Insane
Name: Andrew Sipes
Admitted: 30 May, 1868
No longer enemy, not even soldier,
I lie wounded, waiting for the ground
to be regained, my only cover
a uniform rent meaningless by grapeshot
and stained neutral with blood.
I am conscious of the surrounding dead.
Moans from the dying are relieved
by intermittent musketry and cannon.
My lips crack like dried mud.
I sicken at the irony
taste of my blood and am tended to
only by the flies I am unable to shoo.
When night arrives maybe death
will mistake me for a corpse.
Out of the blackness I hear footsteps.
Lantern light nears.
Someone grabs my hand and I feel
my wedding band stripped off.
I scream.
At dawn fighting resumes. Minie balls whiz
overhead. Sulfurous clouds of smoke
burn my lungs and sting my eyes
incapable of tears. Maggots worm
through my wounds. I fear
the stretcher bearers, ordered to bring in
only those cases most likely to survive,
will judge me a long shot. Urine stings
the wound I now feel in my leg.
As the shock wears off and pain surrenders
to agony, I black out.
Outside an abandoned slave-hut where I wait
my turn, a door laid on a barrel and a box
serves as an operating table. Some men beg
to be first in line for an amputation.
The surgeon ignores them, his feet swollen,
his hands stained red, his fingernails softened
by the constant bath of water and blood.
Nearby, assistants hone scalpels on shoe soles.
Chloroform drowses. The amputation begins,
a single whack just above the right knee.
My arms break free, reaching upward.
I cry, Oh, my God!
My leg is thrown a few feet from the next in line.
A green recruit vomits. A customary prescription
after an amputation is brandy, a favorite
of the surgeon. So there is none.
§
After nine months, I am discharged, a newborn.
The empty space that used to be a pony
frightens my four-year-old. While I drink
away my pension, years pass without touching
my wife. On Decoration Day, after visiting
graves of the war dead, at a church picnic,
when I finish first in the three-legged race,
I refuse to be untied from the preacher
who could not heal like the two-legged Jesus.
From my asylum cot, in dreams,
in the face of enemy fire, I abandon courage
and with two strong legs, run.
MEDICINE TO PREVENT CONCEPTION
W. Va. Hospital for the Insane
Name: Danny Moser
Admitted: 14 February, 1880
Like poison ivy it grows, a contagion
in the belly of my sweetheart,
Polly, too young for motherhood,
her Paw, too itchy on the trigger,
too good a shot.
For deliverance we pray
to a God who prefers creation.
We watch for a sign.
Polly starts to show.
To weed our Garden of Eden
I beg a one-eyed peddler,
self-proclaimed savior of Shiloh.
He offers the cure for a double eagle.
I offer half and Daddy’s war revolver.
Sucking on a peppermint stick,
he slides a bottle in my hand
cold as a creek trout, his smile,
like a cur’s, one whiskered lip raised,
revealing the glint of a silver tooth.
He whispers, Cures all. Tells none.
Lonely as stars we lie awake.
At sunrise, in an abandoned barn,
the blue bottle swaddles in Polly’s hands,
the liquid, thick as whitewash.
Like a baby rattle, her hands shake.
We kiss. She drinks.
On straw, foul with ancient afterbirth
we wait. Through weathered barn boards
sunrays dribble like a leaky churn.
A cock crows.
Polly grabs her stomach,
aching like a thousand catfights.
She throws up, her eyes roll back,
and she screams like her time come.
Like a bride over the threshold,
I carry Polly’s body
to her Paw’s parlor, her face
white as mother’s milk,
his tears, unanswered prayers,
my mind broken, beyond repair,
like a horse with a fractured leg.
§
To prevent me from committing
the Judas-sin in this asylum,
they hog-tie me in a straightjacket.
For hours I rock like a baby.
But I am a patient spider.
From this web I have woven,
I am determined to hang.