Biting Orange

Biting Orange

I pushed a thumb into the rind.
Its bitter tear stung my eye.
I didn’t like the work an orange required.
The seeds, the sticky pulp, the pale flesh
under my nails like chalk.
Smelling limonene all day?

A dark veined sliver of ivory soap
slipped down the kitchen drain.
My skin’s oil failed an essential’s onslaught.
Strong reagents in mother’s classroom
or stranger brews beneath the sink
unveiled a cleaner smell,

shaving the weeks a human takes to shed its skin.
I want simpler fruit than she provided.

Periodic Evaluation

Periodic Evaluation

In a witness room crowded by
a TV trolley,

stained by other protected lips
a paper cup

sits desiccated
by fluorescent lights

on the faux-walnut table top.
No space for both of us.

White hair buzzing, her face flares
grey over me, demanding

that I have no place here.
So help you god. The maroon

smeared across the linoleum floor
must be coffee.

Amy Lemmon, poetry editor for ducts.org, accepted two (or 3) of my poems for the ducts summer 2010 edition.

http://www.ducts.org/content/two-poems-9/

His Big House

His Big House

Jack’s friends lit candles.

Libby read Kindness.

I shook all the hands—

sustained embraces.

When the last guest was gone

she re-arranged the back room

imposing her order

over yours or her mother’s.

The furnace works long

to melt winter’s breath

drawn through a window

some summer cracked open.

As long as I have

this big house,

you have a place to stay

if you need one.

“Then I would hope you will keep that big house

so I have a place to stay when I need one.”

A silver frame cradles

a photo of Jack

climbing his tall sister

in Chenonceau’s garden.

The cold glass blurs

but I can’t polish it clean.

The tarnished loop and whorl

trace ridges like my own.

Dust collects under Jack’s bed.

I swapped his for yours

so others feel his support

and imprint his firm mattress.

I stopped resetting the clock

when the power comes on.

A green beacon beats

from your dark bedroom.

You can heal faster here,

not on your own,

and sound depths of your heart

worn brittle, riddled by grief.

My guests, you and I,

we understand much

too late.  Please don’t you

think that it’s time?

“What may I bring to make me feel welcome?

Cook us his favorite

after school snack.

“I will pan fry Jiaozi or hard boil an egg.”

Make sticky rice as well—

I share his sweet tooth.

I hold a Bordeaux

I hold a Bordeaux

The glass tapered so the wine ignores the tongue
worms down the throat into the brain’s meaty pit.
In the browning edge she says something I miss.
The glass crumbles like an eggshell. A few drops bleed
into the table’s grain. Disappear. I hold
the glass, a broken bird that slapped a window,
still aloft so she could see. Or like a peony
slumped on the asphalt defeated by the morning dew.
Did grief constrict my grip? Is wine preserved
like the yoke in a broken belly? But my palm
is washed. Red drains down my wrist, sticks my jeans
against a leg. Make the anger run more rampant.
More glasses would survive and I could feel the shard.

Ode to a Pillow

Ode to a Pillow

You slept nights in 300 count cotton.
Maybe towards the end,
Denise shrouded you in 500.

Only today I noticed you missing.
In some police locker, obviously,
with the knife and GameCube.

I have to admit some jealousy.
You were the last to bruise his cheeks,
to taste vomit on his lips.

When you smothered his cries,
did you feel his tears soak through your slip
and stain you where you blinded him?

There was an instant, wasn’t there--
when he fought through the drugged sleep,
to feel his arms pinned between her legs?

You didn’t answer him, did you.
You thought you’d shelter him
from the precise nature of her betrayal.

I know you lay awake always
searching for his head to cushion—
to atone for his eternal rest.

If I can’t praise you, dear pillow,
if I don’t petition your release,
where will I find my place to sleep?

Scientists try to stop schizophrenia in its tracks

On Sunday, this article was posted on MSNBC.  I read an article like this completely differently than I would have a few years ago.  This idea that psychosis is a distinct phase in some illnesses like schizophrenia and manic-depression was news to me. And that mental illness is a progressive disease.  I thought back then that crazy just meant crazy. (I don't know if it is true for schizophrenia, but Kramer in his book Against Depression, demonstrates that depression, untreated, deepens over time and becomes more frequent.)

I'm then very keen on what are the early warning signs that hint that psychosis is coming.

Then I look for the bottom line ... does the new treatment or program have proven results?  In this case not yet, but the article gives anecdotal evidence that PIER is helpful.

Subtle, early signs Researchers have known about this warning phase [or prodrome] for decades, but they're still working on how to treat it. Now they're calling in tools like brain scans, DNA studies and hormone research to dig into its biology. They hope that will reveal new ways to detect who's on the road to psychosis and to stop that progression.

In the prodrome, people can see and hear imaginary things or have odd thoughts. But significantly, they understand these experiences are just illusions, or they have a reasonable explanation. In contrast, people with psychosis firmly cling to unreasonable explanations instead.

PIER emphasizes non-drug therapies for its patients, ages 12 to 25, although about three-quarters of them take anti-psychotic medication.

The treatment regimen includes group meetings in which patients and families brainstorm about handling the condition's day-to-day stresses. It also focuses on keeping patients in school and in touch with their families and social networks.

When it comes to treating the prodrome, scientists say they have some promising approaches but no firmly proven treatments to prevent psychosis from appearing.