Poetry

The hunchback on the corner, with gum and shoelaces,
Has his own wisdom and pleasures, and may not be lured
To divulge them to you, for he has merely endured
Your appeal for his sympathy and your kind purchases;

VQR’s connection to the inaugural poem. It’s complicated.

Heavenly earth flutters in the mind, word-borne.

Here it does not rest, a past
I summoned with a bell
so that things awaken

This is the age of ashes.
Ashes of burned children,
of cold trials of hell,

Aging women mourn while they go to market,
buy fish, figs, tomatoes, enough today to
feed the wolf asleep underneath the table
who wakes from what dream?

This was before the time of lithium and Zoloft

before mood stabilizers and anxiolytics

and almost all the psychotropic drugs, but not before thorazine,

which the suicide O’Laughlin called “handcuffs for the mind.”