BRUCE SMITH
The Clearing
When the men on the wards have medicated themselves against self–
felony and sleep under their restraints, when the women
beaten by their men beat themselves into little slips
of things. When the LSD is licked from the envelopes
and the gun is smuggled - spring, trigger, and magazine -
into the ambivalent hands . One man said:
A glln with a bullet
ought to separate the real Messiah from the imposters,
before he put it in his mouth . I thought of Faust,
skeptical in med school - no resurrection, no way out
of the body - before he became the soul's Rothschild .
One woman said:
/'/1
peel off my face with a razor
in order to find the one lInder the one that won't kill
or be killed.
Until then, Thorazine, lithium, and a dozen
purple hearts. When they were all under, when they were id
and superego, buzzed, unstrung humans, when they were cuffed
and chemically graced - Drugs are the jealous god -
I saw therapy was a sleeve
for their bleeding hearts,
their bleeding gums, their whacked and wounded
genitals, pressure sores, phantom wounds
dressed and drained. Out of their mouths, like a lit cigarette
the soul would burn and cloud. Their heads were unscented
flowers - all seed and sex. J'd sniff them, but
I'm professional, you know. It was then she came to me:
the tortured girl, my whipped shadow, my patient
impatient self My initial diagnosis - an acute
someone suffering herself Then the thousand iridescent
veils removed and rent. Her Viennese hands, her Florentine feet -
