My poem "Women's Only Asylum" in The Anemone Sidecar

I am very grateful to editor Kathryn Rantala for including this poem in the latest chapter of The Anemone Sidecar. It deals with madness, a theme which has become always more manifest in some of my latest works.

Women’s Only Asylum
(starring Miss Plath, Miss Frame and Miss Dickinson)

A mansion that is more
like a condo, inhabited
by the kindred souls of
those who have lost

their sanity. You will
find them all gathered
here in participating
disruption wearing

their candid straitjackets,
playing cards with
their mouths, acting
scenes like Tomfools.

There is the crazy
stare of Sylvia
writing wailing lines,
on sheets tossed

around her body.
The new so-called
schizophrenia in
the lucid ravings

of Janet. So many
different forms of
lunacy, but you will
end up loving them

all. Even Emily in her
room, blowing glass
panels to smithereens
at last.

http://www.ravennapress.com/anemonesidecar/pdf/chapter_16.pdf


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