Find and share the perfect poems.
REASON / UNREASON
the brain is
an unlit synagogue
easily charted
in dark waters
using machines
it can baffle faith
& therapy
it can asphyxiate
don’t worry
the drowning dogs
your pretty head
painted for the gods
it’s simple
to rage & riot & rot
to manage
the vacant parking lot
with the appropriate
knives do what some
medicines
can not
Copyright © 2017 by sam sax. “Post-Diagnosis” originally appeared in Madness (Penguin, 2017). Reprinted with permission of the author.
now she’s gone my teacher wants to know
where the speaker enters the poem
the wind blows open the screen door & it catches
on its chain. outback my neighbors are smoking
a pig to make it last. my teacher only became
my teacher after she passed. before that
and again the test comes back negative for waterborne parasites
for gonorrhea of the throat and of elsewhere for white blood cells in the stool
this isn’t always true sometimes it’s a phone call from your lover
sometimes it’s your computer blinking on with news of what’s wrong
with your body this time
i never wanted to grow up to be anything horrible
as a man. my biggest fear was the hair they said
would snake from my chest, swamp trees
breathing as i ran. i prayed for a different kind
of puberty: skin transforming into floor boards
muscles into cobwebs, growing pains sounding