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      May 4, 2017The Nurse in the Terrible DoorwayEric Anderson

      calls my name, a clipboard
      cocked on her hip. The cold eye
      of her stethoscope
      sneers, dangling from her neck
      like wild, constricting Fate,
      and I rise
      from the chair I’ve been hating,
      from these thoughts I can’t get out
      and everyone I love needs
      me to rise, needs me back
      to who I was, that person who
      the dark shapes didn’t seize
      and whose fingers didn’t have
      little mouths, chewing on everything.
      Past the white halo
      of her lab coat,
      I see the long hallway,
      the lights and the linoleum
      racing into a terminal dot,
      clinical art on the walls, paintings
      of prescription labels,
      doors like funhouse mirrors,
      and my reflection already inside
      but not yet
      cured, never cured.

      from #19 - Summer 2003

      Eric Anderson

      “On Monday nights, I bowl. Bowling alleys are proof that poetry can be found anywhere. The old men give me advice and offer me poems; they have names for all the pins they leave, calling them the Greek Church, the Sour Apple, the Bucket, the Mother-in-Law. I encourage everyone to join a league; never has my name seemed so true as it does on my bowling shirt.”

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