MEDICATED DREAM FRAGMENT
dusk unties the laces of my shoes
with every step I tug you by the wrist
down the trail to the last light meadow
where for your birthday I want to show you
the trampled, tawny grass of the spot
where last night a deer slept
at the brook we stop and I take my pill
(even in dreams I take it on time)
with a mouthful of mossy water
then with wet feet we go on
—from Rattle #56, Summer 2017
Tribute to Poets with Mental Illness
__________
Jamie Samdahl: “My mental illness and my poems live in mutualistic symbiosis. The two are hardly separate entities at all. Anxiety and depression are the fodder for poems, and then the poems pacify the illness’ rearing head, if only for a short while. How can we explain our mental illness to the ones most dear to us? Conversationally, it seems impossible. What’s needed is wild imagery, caesuras that invoke uneasiness, confusion, and fear. A poem that gives my reader a glimpse into my reality is a bridge to love.” (website)
