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Wizard
- Red Hen Press
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235 wizArd I broke down in Chomski’s office An elliptical orbit revolving around two foci Ellen and Ellen both suns Voluptuous almost to go primal down on hands and knees in that room where he’d examined me as a child to wallow and sob on the sound stage of childhood Her eyes are the suns Her mind is black space I wanted Chomski to hear me the way he listened when I was eight and quoting Gray’s Anatomy He was my wizard then Chomski the rumbler showed me my bones on the fluoroscope the shadow sack of my beating heart Cracked now cracked sack I’d been taken with sobbing for two days Walled up behind my subway face I needed to cry But Chomski barked “Enough! Stop! A disease of sensitivity You’ve got to be hospitalized 236 Six months You’ll get well But you need to do this!” Sudden white a softness to that hospital As if you could morph vortex into its peace It occurred to me that sensitivity was a code word for my family my half mad beautiful Aunt Dorothy long dead the overheated subset of my mother and me It occurred to me there’d been some cosmic mistake my mother and Ellen each spinning in place this older smaller grayer Dr. Chomski “I don’t need to go to any hospital” I said climbing dully up off his floor He seemed to accept that but he urged me to see a psychiatrist thrust the number at me with a large shiny packet of Valium “Use them, boychik They’ll calm you down” I made polite noises but I knew I couldn’t numb myself out I had to yearn I had to creep towards coherence and the ache was all I had to go on [44.200.230.43] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:45 GMT) • ...