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    Said The Manic To The Muse
    Said The Manic To The Muse
    Said The Manic To The Muse
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Said The Manic To The Muse

    By Jeanann Verlee

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    About this ebook

    Jeanann Verlee's second book, Said the Manic to the Muse, takes a deeper, more focused look at the erratic, whimsical, ominous, and sometimes perilous ways manic depression functions. Introduced through the careful prophecy of three archetypes: Medea, Jezebel, and Kali–each a woman largely misrepresented and wholly misunderstood–these poems detail the story of one woman's struggle to maintain both strength and sanity in the face of abandonment and aging. From dangerous trysts and barroom brawls to "grief-induced psychosis," Said the Manic to the Muse recounts the year she lost everything, including her mind.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateApr 15, 2015
    ISBN9781949342147
    Said The Manic To The Muse

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      Book preview

      Said The Manic To The Muse - Jeanann Verlee

      Author

      I

      Force not the parent’s hand to slay the child.

      —Medea, Euripides

      THE SESSION

      Say alone. Forty times. Pair it with the desert. Say it.

      Alone. Alone. Alone. Say the words plain, she says.

      Say it plain. Say it outright. Alone. Don’t get poetic.

      Say I. Say me. Say I am alone. Say your age, she says.

      Thirty-six, I say. Say it, she says. I am thirty-six.

      Own it. I am alone. I am thirty-six. She says tell me

      about the children. Don’t use metaphor. I say, Blue eyes.

      It’s only a guess. We have—not we, she corrects—I

      have blue eyes. It’s only a guess. Tell me about the children.

      There are hundreds, I say. Punch myself in the stomach.

      Hundreds. She says no, tell me about your children.

      Tell you about the dead? No, she says, no one died.

      Say it clear, stop the poetry. I say, The children in our—

      no, my—future are hard marbles sunk to the bottom

      of a fish tank. No. There is no fish tank. There are no

      marbles. She is growing irritable. I say, There are no

      children. There. I stop talking. She asks more questions.

      I am mute. I am thinking of my sheets. Thinking of my

      molding bathtub and how much blood could fill it. I think

      of a poem written by a friend about a tubful of teeth.

      I think about teeth falling out of my face. About my face

      opened by a bullet’s exit. She asks what I am thinking about.

      I say, Peanut butter. What about peanut butter? I say, I’m

      lying. She says why? I say, There are no children. Never.

      I punch myself in the stomach. She says stop or I will

      restrain you. I dig my nails into the armrest. Don’t

      damage the furniture, she says. I say, Peanut butter.

      She says the session is over. There is no she.

      It’s just a subway car and a Tuesday morning

      where the fluorescent lights are flickering so loud,

      it almost drowns out the voices telling me that

      I will die today. No one ever believes this story.

      CHILDREN MADE OF COTTON

      My son asks where he came from.

      It is my first lie. I say, I brought you home

      from a place where hundreds of little lamb-boys live.

      He says, Really!? I say, Yes, and I almost

      couldn’t choose. Then you, so bright and soft.

      I put you in my cart and went straight to the checkout line.

      He furrows his plush brow, Hrmph!

      I ask him what’s wrong. He says, If it was so easy,

      why didn’t you bring my brothers?

      I tell him he has plenty of brothers,

      pointing to the others strewn across the bed.

      No, Mama, he whispers, it isn’t the same.

      He tucks his head down, covers his eyes with his ears.

      I’m completely without answers.

      My second lie is to tell him the laundry is perfectly safe.

      I watch him bob at the water’s soapy rim, gurgling and straining,

      fighting the impossible pull. He wails on his way to the dryer.

      When I retrieve him I find grid marks burned into his rump.

      He says he forgives me and I begin to cry. A raw,

      convulsive kind of sob. I go like this for hours.

      The third lie he never believes.

      I tell him, Mama loves all her children just the same.

      When he asks if I have real children I tell him,

      You are real, and you are mine. He pouts.

      Says, Mama, stop it. I know I’m only made of cotton.

      All of my bones break at once.

      AS YOUR BODY BECOMES AN INVITATION

      Your breasts are firm as wood. Swollen, milkthick.

      Carry in them a stern ache. At daybreak,

      the familiar rip in your abdomen.

      There was a time you didn’t know your body this well.

      Thirteen. Twenty-five. But you are thirty-six and your hips

      have rotated outward: a slow earthquake.

      Thighs, once thin as baseball bats, shifted down,

      a thick braid of extra muscle.

      Your feet have widened, remarkable and strong.

      You, in the mirror, are a different animal. Your trunk

      is a readied ship, shaped a perfect hourglass.

      Your lips, all of them, plump.

      Your femurs part like wishbone.

      Spine, welded to pelvis. You are sturdy. Unbreakable.

      It is dawn and your body moans its expected elegy.

      But today, your organs flinch. It comes. An open spigot.

      Your body is a drain. An evacuation.

      The opened aorta that spills. And spills.

      This is a new undoing. You. Standing wide

      over bathroom tiles. Your good legs, a red massacre.

      There is not enough cotton to pack this wound.

      You mop the tide with the nice towels your mother sent.

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