Reason Breeds Insanity

Shampoo & Sponge Bath
by J. W. Marshall

1.

It takes a small face
to see itself
in the handmirror offered

when staff says
it’s time to wash that greasy hair.
Says it’ll help.

Like a tuber on the pillow
or the shadow of a spade
is how

I remember looking. Water slopped
on my gown and skin and sheets.
When they laid my head back

into the metal basin
I died and happily that time.

2.

There was a terrifyingly large sky
that first day they rolled me
out for air.

Terrifyingly.
And clouds like balled-up cobwebs.
What if the chair got caught

in a crack or on a rock—I watched for that.
There’s one the orderly said
meaning a cloud

that looks like you.
There was weakness in each of them.
There was a fraying wind. A mess

he said like you
before your bath.

Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me
by John Rybicki

There’s this movie I am watching:
my love’s belly almost five months
pregnant with cancer,

more like a little rock wall
piled and fitted inside her
than some prenatal rounding.

Over there’s her face
near the frying pan she’s bent over,
but there’s no water in the pan,

and so, no reflection. No pool
where I might gather such a thing as a face,
or sew it there on a tablet made of water.

To have and to haul it away,
sometimes dipping into her
in the next room that waits for me.

•

I am old at this. I am stretching
the wick again into my throat
when the flame burns down.

She’s splashing in the tub
and singing, I love him very much,
though I’m old and tired

and cancerous. It’s spring
and now she’s stopping traffic,
lifting one of her painted turtles

across the road. Someone’s honking,
pumping one arm out the window,
cheering her on.

She falls then like there’s a house
on her back, hides her head in the bank grass
and vomits into the ditch.

•

She keeps her radioactive linen,
bowl, and spoon separate. For seven days
we sleep in different rooms.

Over there’s the toilet she’s been
heaving her roots into. One time I heard her
through the door make a toast to it,

Here’s to you, toilet bowl.
There’s nothing poetic about this.
I have one oar that hangs

from our bedroom window,
and I am rowing our hut
in the same desperate circle.

•

I warm her tea then spread
cream cheese over her bagel,
and we lie together like two guitars,

A rose like a screw
in each of our mouths.
There’s that liquid river of story

that sometimes sweeps us away
from all this, into the ha ha
and the tender. At night the streetlights

buzz on again with the stars,
and the horses in the field swat their tails
like we will go on forever.

•

I’m at my desk herding some
lost language when I notice how quiet
she has been. Twice I call her name

and wait after my voice has lost its legs
and she does not ring back.
Dude, I’m still here, she says at last

then the sound of her
stretching her branches, and from them
the rain falling thick through our house.

I’m racing to place pots and pans
everywhere. Bottle her in super canning jars.
For seventeen years, I’ve lined

the shelves of our root cellar with them.
One drop for each jar.
I’ll need them for later.

Stupid University Job
by Sharon Mesmer

Your loveliest of sway-backs;
of mine I was once ashamed,
and my uni-brow and crooked teeth,
and red hair my mother never let me wash
all winter,
afraid I’d catch a draft.
She wouldn’t let me bathe, either,
which made gym class a horror.
I thought I had it bad
until I met that handsome Scottish man
whose parents tried to make him spontaneously combust
by feeding him haggis laced with gunpowder
and making him sleep in the stove.
Instead of an ear, he had a shiny, snail-shaped ridge.
I guess we all have our tragic flaw.
Mine is like that of the naked man
who holds up a sign that says “I’m naked”
and runs screaming through the park.
My handlers say I’m difficult,
but don’t you believe it.
My soul still radiates a luminous intensity
despite this stupid university job.

The semester is over, and while it was one of the most difficult I have had so far, I also learned more than I usually do. I learned about who I am as a person. I gave and received grace to my students and from my professors. I continue to try to reconcile my faith with my actions. I watched as one friend destroyed a relationship, and witnessed other friends begin theirs. I saw a friend define herself, graduate, and become a more amazing woman before my eyes. I watched as my students grew more into who they want to be, and I allowed them to help shape me into the teacher I want to be. I learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know about Modernism(s) and Modernity, time and the Renaissance, and Gilroy and the Black Atlantic. More importantly, I survived. And, I am a better woman for it. I defended fat kids everywhere at an International Conference and had a professor tell me that body studies and queer theory are trendy.

I know now more than ever who I want to be. I can glimpse how I might go about getting there. I want people to look at me and want what I have. I want to rise above the pettiness of this world, change it into love and peace, and help people to know that all we have right now is how we treat other people. We can stop hoping that things will be better in the life to come, and make it happen right here, right now. We can stop insisting that everything will come together in the end, and make it come together now.

Here is what I want: I want to teach literature. Somewhere. Someday. And I want to give grace and receive grace on a daily basis.

I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.