Susan L. Leary

I grew up next to a power plant in the Midwest

& whenever a friend came over, I asked my mother

to take her home. Earnestness can be unbearable:

the girl who pulled the plastic horse’s mane straight

from its scalp, then tried her lips at my harmonica.

There should be a blood test for the emotions,

simple instructions folded onto a slip of paper & slid

inside a test tube. Sometimes, the illness is the consolation.

Sometimes, amid nuclear war, not even your mother

can hold the catmint in full bloom.

How often is language the arbitrary injury & not

the lack thereof? At the meal table: What’s been going on

at school, dear? Have you been giving your teachers

any trouble? The only recourse: to collapse into doggedness

as much as self-pity, try my hand at the piano again.

But the nervous system is a wreck & those hands worn

clean with Palmolive. Self-talk, hardly useful. Improve

your stamina, girl. Dab the corners of your mouth with a rider’s

handkerchief or risk the embarrassment of eating. My god.

The times I’ve heard life is looking happily into a camera. I say,

                                         even when photographed I do not exist.